Is this the end for guys? Are men being “aroused to extinction”?
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Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, “Why are boys struggling?” He shares some stats (lower graduation rates, greater worries about intimacy and relationships) and suggests a few reasons — and challenges the TED community to think about solutions.
Why you should listen
Philip Zimbardo knows what evil looks like. After serving as an expert witness during the Abu Ghraib trials, he wrote The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. From Nazi comic books to the tactics of used-car salesmen, he explores a wealth of sources in trying to explain the psychology of evil.
A past president of the American Psychological Association and a professor emeritus at Stanford, Zimbardo retired in 2008 from lecturing, after 50 years of teaching his legendary introductory course in psychology. In addition to his work on evil and heroism, Zimbardo recently published The Time Paradox, exploring different cultural and personal perspectives on time.
Still well-known for his controversial Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo in his new research looks at the psychology of heroism. He asks, “What pushes some people to become perpetrators of evil, while others act heroically on behalf of those in need?”
What others say
“Professor Zimbardo deserves heartfelt thanks for disclosing and illuminating the dark, hidden corners of the human soul.” — Václav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic.
It isn’t that bad a talk. There are a lot of things MRAs have been saying for quite some time, a few things that seem to be “white knight” feminism, some traditionalism, some liberalism, etc. The “white knight” feminism and traditionalism part centers around men’s duty to produce for society and women. Although I don’t necessarily disagree that men have a duty to society and men should produce. I think they mistake a very fundamental aspect of being a person, personal best interest. Men have always been disposable in society. Society encourages the socially accepted forms of disposability like men… Read more »
MGTOW.com
Mgtow is the best for men
Well, not if you had actually wanted children. Unfortunately for me, it was a moot point…
Good points made, and probably very true. There’s definitely a lot more to it though. MGTOW is an acronym I hadn’t even heard of until fairly recently, but I see that “movement”, way of thinking, or whatever you want to call it, on the rise. I can’t say the ideas contained under its banner are 100% without merit. How many males in Generation Z are adopting that mindset? My step-son and his friends were all aware of MGTOW well before I was, and elements of it filter through their discussions that barely ever occurred to me and my friends at… Read more »
Lost it in the Living room, looking for it in the kitchen, because the light is better in there. We are not focusing here. Our mental acuity is somewhere else. Porn and video games are not the cause, they are the effect. Everything else we’ve done to boys is the cause. It is what has driven them to the only safe place they still have in this society: their imagination, their inward thoughts. We’ve left them to the only people they can trust to have their backs: Themselves. Our zeal in helping girls has caused us to ignore our boys,… Read more »
DJ: I hope you saved a copy of that for yourself. I’m copy/pasting it myself to a local text doc for future reference. You pretty much nailed it. I don’t see this getting fixed any time soon either. I know how, because of the kind of guy I was growing up, I got targeted hard for this kind of toxic thinking, so I was a little before my time…but that also means I know how it works, and can clearly see it happening to all men everywhere now. I fear it’s not too much hyperbole to say that human civilization… Read more »
Thanks, Anthony. Keeping them all, because I do not think the world is ready to hear what I have to say on all these subjects, but I do know that it hits so many men at their very core. I’ve been out there in the past. I’ve written on the subject, but most was either rejected or bought up and shelved (not here, but elsewhere). I’ve gotten the phone calls from such as the Boston Globe (and other newspapers and men’s periodicals – even TV talk shows), for my opinion (based upon that writing that did reach out there), but… Read more »
DJ I have no knowledge about how you Americans treat boys from they are born and and later on. But please do not close your eyes here to the word AROUSAL. Gottman, the clever man that do research about marriage wrote somewhere that women should know that men are aroused fast and her job is to quiet him down in an argument not wind him up.It is one of the many biological differences between men and women. And exactly something similar is important to remember in learning , I mean I have read that one of the important reasons why… Read more »
I hear you, Kim. I’m not ignoring that, but contending that to be the main reason for boys failures. Of course it exists. We are walking hormones when young, but that will never change as it is biological. What I am contending is that we cease focusing on something that we cannot change, and learn how to resolve the issue rather then try to amputate that. We do that (as your school example eluded to) by redirecting that energy in more positive rather then negative ways. We cannot blame our boys for their biology, and we cannot blame them for… Read more »