Condemning Young Men To Their Fate

How can young men not feel as though they’re being betrayed?

Despite all their rage, they’re just rats in a cage.

In a prior entry, I expressed my biggest specific concern about the Fourth Turning:

One last point before the big wrap-up. What troubles me most about the Fourth Turning is that it inevitably involves the military. There’s not a single Fourth Turning in American history that didn’t, you can look it up. Every one of them ended in some form of major military conflict incurring a tremendous amount of casualties, disproportionately young men. It seems hard to believe now, but between now and whenever the Fourth Turning ends, something will happen that involves the military, lots of men under arms, and carnage leading to the deaths of many. Let me say again, the majority of the deaths will be men. The significance of this is due to increasing discord between the two genders, along with the fact that anecdotal data indicates young men are increasingly becoming alienated, angry, or in some cases, demoralized. Having millions of alienated, angry, demoralized young men is a tried-and-true social destabilizer.

At some point, something will need to be done about them. Either they get sent off to fight a war to fight an external enemy, or the guns get turned inwards against them.

Let’s dive deeper into this topic, because I don’t think it’s talked about anywhere near as much as it needs to be. Let’s return to this graph from a previous entry:

At the end of every order is a civil war or revolution, paving the way to the new order. These events are violent, the only difference being a matter of degree. There’s no reason the end of the current order will be any less violent. There’s little to no historical precedent for it. As I explained previously, most of the resulting deaths will be men. This, again, is how it’s always been throughout history.

The Neil Howe-William Strauss model isn’t the only example showing that a society-threatening crisis cyclically arrives in the U.S. approximately every 80 years. The model formulated by Peter Turchin shows an inverse correlation between well-being and the level of political stress in America:

Going back to the Howe-Strauss “turnings” model, look at what happens every Fourth Turning:

Source

Obviously, we’ve yet to reach the end of the current Fourth Turning, so there’s plenty of time left for something terrible to happen, unfortunately. When it does, many lives will be lost. Most of them will be men, disproportionately young. I know nobody wants to hear it, but we’re all adults, so we deal with reality here. There’s no reason to expect this well-established historical cycle to break.

It’s time for the customary reminder: this is a blog about the practical and tangible, not the cultural and spiritual (go see Rod Dreher if that’s your thing). I’m bringing this to the table because it should be obvious by now there are practical and tangible implications to the young male problem. What’s the problem, exactly? The answer lies in biology.

Humans are higher-intelligence animals driven nonetheless by primal instincts. A purpose of civilization is to restrain and channel those instincts towards more constructive ends. If not restrained and properly channeled, life becomes much like the animal kingdom: a feral, survival-of-the-fittest existence where only the strong survive and the weak either killed or made subservient to the strong. These instincts never really go away, they’re just suppressed. Much as we don’t want humans to behave like animals, primal instincts can only be suppressed so far. Suppress them too much and people start going crazy. On some level, we need to be allowed to be ourselves.

Men are obviously more aggressive than women. The same is doubly true of young men. They’re at once indispensable (as are young women) and dangerous to society. Duality being the nature of our existence, young men can either build and sustain society, or they can be the ones responsible for its downfall. Controlling young men is a challenge every civilization has had to manage, some better than others, and their success or failure in doing so determines the fate of said civilization. If they’re not trying to deal with young men from within, they’re trying to deal with young men coming from elsewhere. This fundamental fact of life is at the heart of the crisis roiling the West at the moment.

Gad Saad, an evolutionary biologist, is a man most qualified to speak on the topic:

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A lot there, but the main takeaway is that defending your civilization involves sending forth men who are willing to clash with other men who pose a threat. Obviously, the problem is that the West is refusing do so, but that’s not the point here. The point is that there’s a right way to use men in a society. When you misuse young men, they either become useless or, at worst, the reason for a society’s downfall. And now, America and the West isn’t only misusing, but abusing, men at the worst possible moment in our civilizational cycle. Why would anyone paying attention think this is going to lead to a good outcome?

The X account “Cultural Husbandry” had an insightful essay on this topic. They wrote [paragraphs added for ease of reading]:

What causes revolutions? When does the violence start? To find the answer, study one group: Dissatisfied, angry young men. Nearly every revolution in human history was started by this cohort, and if you want to know how likely you are to have a revolution, ignore everything else and study the angry young men in your society.

Why are they angry? How many of them are there? Do they communicate regularly? Do they have weapons? Are there political movements that address their grievances and defuse their anger, or are they mocked and shamed and at the point of boiling? Do they have a stake in society, and do they have incentives to maintain stability and keep things as they are or are they wholly disincentivized?

These are the questions you have to ask to know if landlords are about to get dragged out of their houses and shot. These are the questions you have to ask if you want to know if aristocrats, celebrities, academics, journalists, and politicians are about to be beaten, killed, and paraded through the streets. These are the questions you have to ask if you want to know when the next genocide is going to occur. It’s happened hundreds of times, dozens in the 20th century alone, and it could be about to happen again, in the USA.

We are coming up on the final chance for a political solution to the USA's problems before we could enter a full-blown, violent revolution. We have had multiple missed exits to political solutions to violence, which I will describe below.

It’s a great essay, so read it all when you have time. Here’s what society needs to do if they want to avert disaster:

Sex and stable societies: Stable societies have to find a way to pacify young men, for the above mentioned reason that young men are THE only known cause of violent revolutions. If you piss off enough young men, your civilization doesn’t survive. Throughout history, countries have found different ways of doing this: empires typically send their young men off to conquer foreign land - this is what the British did, and what the Japanese did after the Rice Riots of the early 20th century. Send the angry young guys to kill foreigners and take some land for themselves.

Whoa, hold on a second… we need to send young men overseas to fight wars of conquest? I thought we were trying to move past that? Yes, we should move past that, but relax: there’s an alternative.

I don’t know if we’re ready for it, though:

Modern, non-colonial nation states don’t usually have this option. They have to calm the guys down another way. One traditional way is marriage. Get the guys married, ideally in a 1:1 ratio, and things calm down a lot. Polygamy typically creates unstable societies: look at the constant strife in the middle east as an example. If 3 guys out of 4 can’t get a wife, expect constant violence, suicide bombings, etc.

Similarly, noncommittal relationships tend to be associated with very high rates of violence. Look at the West African matriarchal societies, where men don’t stay with their pregnant partners, and instead form rotating circus of bandits, rapists, and murderers. These societies never invented the wheel, the plough, the sail, or a written script, and today enjoy the highest rape and murder rates on the planet. This is almost certainly because of the constant havoc caused by angry, unanchored, deracinated, alienated men, few of whom knew their fathers.

Tragically, this pattern that has been nearly-identically reproduced in black communities in major US metro areas, see: Baltimore, East St. Louis, Detroit, etc.; communities that BLM is conspicuously silent about, because BLM is a managerial project for increasing the number of white-collar administrators in public and private institutions, NOT a project to improve the lives of black people.

Again, there’s a lot there to talk about. Our society is ill-equipped to have a serious conversation on any of this. Prevailing cultural/social norms/values don’t allow for it. Feminism and the abandonment of even the pretense of sexual norms makes it impossible to say aloud that marriage and family-formation is the foundation of stable society. But feminism has sent a message to men that women are off-limits and to women that all men are out to oppress them. It’s never been easy to date and get married, but for many men, it’s become next to impossible. As for Blacks in America, society has decided there’s either nothing to be done or that it’s better to just let them do whatever they want, the consequences be damned.

Competition Leads To Conflict

Earlier this year, I wrote about how the male-female divergence is the greatest of all divides today, more than race or even politics. In many ways, gender relations is where all other issues derive, because all societies are built upon symbiosis between male and female. No matter who holds “wears the pants” in the relationship, a society needs males and females to cooperate.

Our society today, however, is built around male-female competition. Men and women not only need to compete with one another for jobs, economic resources, social standing, even love, but the game is heavily tilted in the favor of women. There’s no way to underscore what a dangerous, utterly reckless, wholly unsustainable arrangement this is. When men and women are in competition, what incentive do they have to cooperate? There’s nothing complicated about this. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The Internet is a bottomless pit full of feminists scolding men for not willing to share, for being “threatened” by women with careers, etc. Ignore it all; it’s a bunch of nonsense. Show me a historical example of a society built upon direct male-female competition and managed to thrive and last for generations. I’ll happily wait.

Male-female competition seems to have hit critical mass in our current moment. Biology guarantees men and women will see the world differently, but we’ve never seen the kind of divergence in worldview like we do today. Competition leads to conflict, after all. Why would two groups of people in conflict seek communion? Why would they marry? Have families? Again, don’t overthink this stuff. It’s really not that nuanced.

Male-female competition is having a political impact, not surprisingly, though the extent of the impact may surprise some:

A number of observers noted that the trends are in the Right’s favor: women’s political preferences are more or less constant, while men’s political preferences have shifted decisively right. Perhaps this is good from a political standpoint for the Right, but what does it say about social stability? Nothing good. Even if the Right wins the election on the backs of men, this is likely to deepen the divide, just as the Left winning elections on the backs of women will absolutely entrench the divide. Men cannot and shouldn’t be expected to shift further left to catch up with women, but women cannot be expected to moderate their views, either. Not under present circumstances, any way.

Yet, long term, men and women need to come to some sort of consensus once more. It’s the only way forward. Both sides, male and female, Left and Right, Democrat and Republican, aren’t being realistic when it comes to solutions.

I’m not going to highlight the Left’s arguments, as we’ve all likely heard them all and none of them are in any way useful. I did want to highlight an example of a seemingly well-meaning argument that ultimately misses the mark by a country mile:

But can they do it? If they want to be successful, masculinity must be defined along its own merits, not by feminist standards. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be masculinity. More importantly, the Democrats must be gender-realist. This means consistently recognizing gender differences, not only when it’s politically beneficial to do so. This also means dispensing with the transgender nonsense and the primacy of the LGBTQ+ community. Does anyone believe the Democrats, the Left, nor our society circa 2024, for that matter, is ready to make these necessary shifts? Mind you, these are the minimum shifts necessary for improving gender relations and bringing men and women back to a cooperative, as opposed to competitive, mindset. If these changes cannot be implemented, then nothing will improve.

The Right is increasingly living in a fantasy world when it comes to gender relations as well. The fact is, we’re not undoing 200 years of progress, definitely not within an election cycle. Donald Trump winning in November won’t place men back into prominence. Establishing an American version of Islamic Sharia law, as many on the far-right seem to desire, isn’t just a stupid idea, it’d be roundly opposed by everyone except for the terminally-online. Even abolishing the 19th Amendment, which guarantees universal suffrage, is well outside the Overton window at the moment. As usual, the lesson is, stick to reality. The more drastic the change, the more instability it creates in the short-term, with no guarantee of success. The fact is, bigger changes can only come in an environment where instability already exists: think a civil war or revolution. What is a revolution, anyway, if not drastic change in a short period of time?

My conclusion is much the same as always: there’s no political solution to any of this, maybe no solution at all. Except to head into the storm and weather it, of course. We’re dealing with forces well beyond our ability to control. There’s a reason why historical cycles, whether its the Howe-Strauss model or the Turchin model, repeat themselves. The more we indulge in the lie that there’s something we can do about this, the less time we have to prepare for what’s coming.

What’s coming? We should all know by now: civil war or revolution. Unless the U.S. manages to find something for millions of young men to do in unison, like we did over 80 years when we sent them off to fight the biggest war in history, men today are going to end up taking out their frustrations here at home. The Regime can find a war for them to fight overseas - against China, Iran, Russia - but they’re not going to find many takers. Patriotic sentiments are at an all-time low and a minority of Americans are willing to die for their country. Even an assault on our homeland is likely to be met with ambivalence, at best, and a fatal fracturing, at worst. Nobody’s in any mood to put on a uniform and leave home to kill foreigners or die trying. Don’t even bring up the possibility of a draft.

Forget buying young men off; that’s what we’ve been trying this whole time and it’s obviously not working. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this situation. The economy has long since passed the point of diminishing returns. Life is getting more expensive, it’s tougher to get ahead, and the average man is competing with not only lots of other men, but women as well, in a game which women have a leg up by virtue of being women. If there’s no political solution to this problem, there’s never been an economic one.

This brings us back to violence on the home front. We can only guess what it’s going to look like. Right now, anyway, it’s difficult for me to imagine groups of armed young men marching the streets a la 1920s Germany. But it also depends on how things shape out the more conditions deteriorate in the country. I think the key factor is the economy, as it’s the one thing keeping a lid on things. Sure, life has gotten expensive and it’s difficult to get ahead, but things aren’t so bad that the better alternative is to resort to violence. As I’ve said before, until things like food, fuel, and health care become less accessible, nobody has any incentives to destabilize the system.

But an economic crisis hasn’t hit yet. When it does, social order isn’t going to crumble overnight. It’s going to take several years at least of prolonged economic misery before it translates into higher levels of violence. I’ll talk about in an upcoming post, but the unrest you currently see among the British is partly rooted in years of economic hard times, unemployment, and high inflation, with crime providing the spark for the inferno.

Britain had the benefit of a gradual, manageable decline, a luxury I’m not sure exists for the U.S. As has been in the case previously, any economic downturn, even if it begins in the U.S., will likely impact it the least, given the innate size and strength of the U.S. economy. The difference is, however, it’s not 2012 any longer. The state of the West, the world as a whole, is entirely different from from when the Fourth Turning began in the late-2000s. Crisis hits harder in a time when there’s no shortage of them. When you see how many crises lay ahead between now and around 2033, you see how quickly events can get out of hand.

In fact, we do need to talk about the situation in Britain a little bit. To give a quick summary on the situation, primarily White middle- and working-class Britons are revolting over the murder of three White girls, killed by a British native of Somali descent. The reaction may seem disproportionate, but only if one ignores all the crimes committed by migrants or other non-native residents of the Isles and the British state’s unwillingness to deal with the problem, at best, or their complicitly, at worst.

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Keir Starmer drew a line in the sand, basically challenging the protesters and rioters to a fight. Keep in mind, Starmer stood (or knelt, more accurately) in solidarity with the BLM protests of 2020 and has had next to nothing to say about the ongoing pro-Palestinian protesters, which have been violent at times. If Starmer chooses to persist in confronting the so-called “far-right” instead of tackling the problem of demographic change, not only is a civil war a possible outcome, but British men are going to be disproportionately victimized in the process.

Again, I’m going to talk about Britain in greater detail in an upcoming post, but I bring it up because it’s a real-world, real-time example of what young men, especially young White men, will have to face in the coming years. They already face a society obscenely hostile to them, they live with the presumption of guilt for crimes they’ve yet to commit, are forced to compete with not just one another, but with women, as well, for a place and stake in society and the chance to have families and experience continuity. Meanwhile, society, with the full support of its women, are giving criminals free reign to offend at will, and also importing millions of other young men who’ll pose even more competition for the young men already here. Remember that suicide, crime, and drugs are all problems that impact men the most. When the Fourth Turning comes full circle and young men start losing their lives in significant numbers, it’ll be like kicking them when they’re already down.

How can young men not feel as though they’re being betrayed? Or that they’re being targeted? They’re absolutely being targeted, because that’s what happens when a regime and the young men of a given society end up at odds with one another. This explains in large part why young men aren’t joining the military throughout the West. Why would they want to fight and die on behalf of a regime utterly hostile to their very existence? Why would they join an institution which itself has politically compromised itself, promoting the very values driving men away from the military in the first place?

Since we can rule out a foreign military conflict, that only leaves civil war or revolution as solutions, if you can call them that, to the young male problem our societies will all soon face, that Britain is now facing. All sides will try to attract men so they can fight the other, but most young men will side with those who give their grievances legitimacy, not the ones who drone on about “toxic masculinity” or promote policies that are making things difficult for young men. The only ingredient missing is leadership: someone who can inspire young men to stand up and fight for their dignity and future. You can still bet the Regime, as Prime Minister Starmer of Britain suggests, will increasingly be willing to employ violence to force men into submission as they prove resistant to the bread and circuses.

The X account “Labrador Skeptic” had a good thread explaining the stakes:

I’m sure the videos are widely seen in the UK, and young white US males are watching as well.

There is regular, horrific violence committed against native Brits by immigrants. The government does nothing. A particularly horrific crime occurs. The young men of Britain rise up in response - and we see video after video of the police who will not stand up to immigrants, violently attacking the young me of Britain. You see other videos of immigrants protesting & rioting at will, the police do nothing. It's only the young white men who are attacked.

The UK - like the US - already has major recruitment issues. The UK is also becoming a joke due to lack of functioning weapons system, their ships often can’t sail even as many planes don’t fly These videos are likely to destroy most of what remains of UK military recruitment

Even if it’s another nation, I think the imagery is likely to be powerful for young men in the US. The current generation of young men- in sharp contrast to young women - is the most conservative that the nation has seen, at least in terms of how they politically identify. Scenes of young white men being attacked while immigrants freely rampage are visually compelling.

Men are being provoked. There’s no question about it. The defensive, reactionary instincts of males are being triggered constantly through increasing disorder, demographic conflict, and a society that views masculinity as problematic. On top of that, they’re increasingly being given less of a stake in society, no reason to participate in perpetuating the status quo. Probably because there’s not much for them there.

Returning to our friend Kulak:

Source

I’m not promoting civil war as a solution to our problems. I hope Kulak isn’t, either. The point is that nothing’s going to change unless a cataclysmic event - like a civil war or revolution - occurs, forcing wholesale changes to our way of life. No, we’re still not rolling back 200 years of progress, but an economic downfall followed by a civil war/revolution would have the effect of restoring some realism to gender roles. As Selco Begovic, survivor of the Bosnian War, explained, everyone reverted to traditional gender roles once the war began, regardless of what they were doing before. Even if things don’t get that bad here, violence and hard times in general tend to make idealistic arrangements difficult to maintain. In another context, things like transgenderism, plus other radical social movements, are nearly impossible to sustain outside a civilizational context. But I digress.

Hard Times Create Strong Men

I sincerely hope nothing bad happens. I’m afraid there’s no escaping history, however. Every Fourth Turning comes with a catacylsm which consumes thousands of lives, again mostly men. It’s difficult to imagine what that’d be, but it’s going to happen. It happens like clockwork.

I realize this means many of the men and boys in our lives, many of the men and boys we see on a daily basis, are going to get caught up in the malestrom. They may end up becoming its casualties. It’s heart-breaking to think about. But again, history shows this is an inescapable outcome. This time, I think it’s going to be a conflict on home soil. More on that to come.

For now, the cataclysm hasn’t happened yet. At least, it hasn’t come into full view. What can be done on a practical front? I’m not sure there’s a whole lot. But the least anyone can do is to love and care for the men, especially the younger men, in your lives. Hard times lay ahead for them, a lot will be asked of them, a lot will be taken from them. But we’re not surviving the tumult to come without them. Societies survive because of men who willingly face the enemies and the unknown on our behalf. We are fools for demonizing them, for trying to make masculinity less “toxic,” for forcing men to compete with women for a place and stake in society. It may be too late to do anything about it as a society. But as individuals? As families? Always operate under the mentality that it’s not too late.

I also want to make clear: this isn’t about bashing women. Women aren’t the villains in this story. In the long run, women will be adversely impacted as well, it’s just that it takes much longer for the consequences to manifest. The reason why men are more sensitive to things like crime, demographic change, and immigration is because they are the ones who confront the immediate consequences of it. Men are the majority of crime victims, demographic change and immigration create challenges men have to overcome, along with bringing additional competitors for jobs, wealth, and women.

Women, on the other hand, will always align with whomever holds power in society at a given time. I think women’s extreme leftward shift can be explained in part because the Left has so decisively achieved dominance. Combined with economic well-being, it’s no wonder women are largely satisfied with the status quo, no matter how much dissatisfaction they may express. Don’t hold it against them. It’s at least rational behavior.

Unfortunately, it’s for this reason that women cannot be relied upon to be a part of the solution. Not yet, anyway. At the moment, women will back the Regime because they benefit from doing so. Men have less reason to because they benefit less from doing so. The deeper we get into the Fourth Turning, however, the more the crisis intensifies, we’ll start seeing women come around, especially when their safety is at stake. Civil wars and revolutions disproportionately affect men, but women are always uniquely vulnerable. As long as life continues to be a sweet deal for women, however, don’t expect some great “redpilling” among them.

Lastly, remember the saying: Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. We’re going to live through some hard times for sure thanks to weak men, Joe Biden being arguably the pinnacle of that cohort. But those hard times will create our fair share of strong men. Strong men will create good times again. All men should aspire to be among the strong. All of us, male or female, should expect the males in their lives to be strengthened by the hard times. Nobody should be losing their lives needlessly, but they shouldn’t be capitulating and submitting unnecessarily, either.

In closing, when you have time, watch this conversation between Nick Freitas and Rudyard “WhatifAltHist” Lynch. The two discuss the young man problem, along with other issues. One of these days, I hope to convince Lynch to come into my space to discuss the future of our country.

It’s your turn now: do you agree that the Fourth Turning will culminate in a catastrophe costing an untold number of lives? What do you think it’ll be? What can be done about the increasingly dissatisfied number of young men in society? What do you think the Regime will do? What are you sensing among young men in your life?

Let’s discuss in the comments.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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