Masculinity problem is reaching critical mass. I specialize partially in seeing teenage male clients, and right now they're some of the most lost (and forgotten) cohort of humans here in America. Over the decades, we've rightfully shifted attention towards minority, under-served, and diverse demographics to bring equity to society. One of the unintended consequences, however, is men have been left by the wayside. Women have evolved, but society isn't teaching men how to catch up. Undergraduate enrollment here in the states is now 60/40 women to men, with young men being much more likely to attempt suicide than young women as well (and a whole host of other problems).
This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game; when I talk to my fellow therapists about raising up men, it's assumed (and loudly vocalized) it must come at the cost of women's rights. No! We can raise everyone up. We can invigorate and support minority groups in their fight for equality without having to also put some other group down! There isn't a ceiling on the resource that is joy.
P.S. The most chilling part of the infographic you provided about entertainment is the spot where the source says "Did you know half of all waking hours are now spent engaged in entertainment? Learn more about how this might impact your brand." It would be like saying "half of all waking hours are now spent laying on the couch, learn more about how this affects your store's furniture sales."
A very good article, I mean really, but . . . (well, there had to be a 'but'!) . . .
What does an ordinary man, like your humble reviewer here, do with all this? I mean, I'm not bound for glory in politics or on a corporate board, I'm just a reasonably intelligent man who eschews wealth and profile for reasons of principle and taste (not to mention laziness) and who is doing his best to give his teenage son a decent baseplate in life.
But how do I respond to the world as it is presented in so many publications and YouTube videos, and with particular poignancy in this piece of yours? I can continue buying books, CDs, vinyl, and the odd DVD of an cinema classic so my home stays a bastion of a departing 'culture'. Maybe buy a new home further out of town in someplace inconspicuous. However retreating or circling the wagons rarely wins the day unless the cavalry shows up. But do we have any cavalry left? Or even one guy riding a white horse? Hell, even Sancho Panza on a donkey is starting to seem too much to ask for.
My point is, I find myself going ever inward, focused on old ways and things, essentially turning my back on the future. This may be healthy for individuals, at least in the short term, but it's no way to run a society. You feel like you're hiding with a candle under a blanket inside a madhouse. You spend your time muttering and snorting into your walrus moustache over things that you read online. I've led my life according to the dictum 'never a leader nor a follower be' (actually I think it's 'never a lender nor a borrower be' but they mean something similar), but instead of exploring strange new worlds and boldly going where no self-effacing 'person' has gone before, I'm finding myself holed up somewhere waiting for the zombies.
>> I’ve grumbled here in the past about tech companies manipulating customers and users instead of serving them. This may seem like a small thing, but the end result is a culture that grows more tyrannical and inflexible with each passing month.
Completely agree. Put a bit differently, something I've noticed frequently is that people who create amazing things tend to have an odd attitude towards money: they tend to have a somewhat cavalier attitude about it, and plow it back into what they're doing.
Disney seemed to take every penny the Disney company made and put it back into the business to the point where, in the early days, the studio was almost always strapped for cash. His personal fortune he put on the line to build DisneyLand. Musk, whatever you think of him, took the money he made from PayPal and put it all on the line to create SpaceX and Tesla. Jobs I never heard mention money as a goal, but he sure talked a lot about what technology could do for humanity. (The watch was developed after his death, as it turns out.)
I'm kind of using "pursuit of money as an end" as a proxy for "manipulating rather than serving". But I really think you can feel the shift when a company loses the joy in pleasing its customers and moves over to treating its customers like piggy banks.
The origin of the word "entertain" comes from the Latin inter ‘between’ + tenere ‘to hold’. Entertainment was supposed to "hold us between" the main parts of life. If we are spending half our waking our hours in "suspension", what has our life become about?
We have Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business."
When I spoke of this to a perceptive colleague he replied: " . . . it's not even being 'amused,' it's being distracted to death!" Nowadays it's not even valid "amusement," which might have at least some meager value, but mere distraction . . . OK, let's see–whats next? And next . . . and next . . .
We're also drowning iin STORIES... three acts, a hero, a challenge, triumph at the end and everyone goes home. The dramatic structure has seeped into just about every human interaction, especially political.
But life isn't a story. It's make-believe. Trying to make life fit the requirements of story is a losing game.
I’ll switch my brain off sometimes. Everybody needs a break. But if you’re a creator in any way, self-discipline and live of the craft usually take up much spare time, as it should. Balance is always good.
Google is a business, with shareholders - employees and many people to answer to. Of course they are going to tweak their products to be efficient money making machines, this is what is expected of someone their size. Reality is ethical business do not thrive on the same level as unethical ones, so support the small ones. As much as I am falling in love with Substack, I hope they never thrive on the same level as google, it feels different here and I like it.
You know, I was raised by a man who wasn't toxically masculine. He had scarlet fever as a young child, was sickly for a long time afterward, and as the youngest of four brothers his mother claimed him to help her in the kitchen.
In consequence, he could cook and sew with the best of them. He was great with kids, too, but I think his father probably was, too. I learned it from him. His gender presentation was clearly and obviously masculine, but behaviorally, like me, he was pretty androgenous. Pretty much right in the middle.
There is a path here to follow, but it's not a path that gets a lot of attention. The whole "loud and proud" thing is what gets eyeballs, whereas compassion and empathy doesn't. That's what's making it hard for men, they don't see the alternative. Though it is there.
I think it's scary that half of waking hours are now dedicated to entertainment. Don't get me wrong; I love entertainment! But as my Latin teacher taught me, "ne quid nimis", or "nothing in excess". And THAT is an excessive amount of time. Also, when I think of it, it reminds me of a book I had to read as an undergrad: Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". In short, the book points to a dystopian future in which our politics would suffer because we're all so entertained and amused by tv (the book was written in '85) that we fail to notice that our liberal democracy is slipping away from us. One thing's sure: the more our collective time is taken up with entertainment, the less time we're spending doing EVERYTHING else in our lives (or doing it only in halves as we try to divide our attention between a Netflix series and whatever loved ones we might be watching it with). Neil Postman didn't have an answer for this, and nor do I.
This stuff is all disturbing. As a James Brown fan, I particularly dislike the idea of Universal making AI-driven simulacrum of his music. Do they not understand how unique he was as a singer, songwriter and producer? His kind of skill cannot be easily reproduced by technology.
With respect to the effect of songs that exceed 10 minutes, if you question just how immersive this can be, allow me to direct your attention to the album "Concierto." The sextet is therein is led by guitarist Jim Hall, accompanied by Paul Desmond, Chet Baker, Roland Hanna, Ron Carter and Steve Gadd. One of the comments that accompanies this video captures its aesthetic perfectly: "A 20- minute musical conversation among artists who use their instruments as paint brushes and our senses as their canvas," My all-time favorite jazz piece and it's not even close.
Fair enough. But in my work as an engineer, log scales are most effectively used if the underlying mechanism behaves exponentially. Then you get a straight line on log scales and do a bit of interpolation. And you also don't get confused on which direction is increasing when less than unity. There are better ways, imho, to handle the effects of outliers.
Masculinity problem is reaching critical mass. I specialize partially in seeing teenage male clients, and right now they're some of the most lost (and forgotten) cohort of humans here in America. Over the decades, we've rightfully shifted attention towards minority, under-served, and diverse demographics to bring equity to society. One of the unintended consequences, however, is men have been left by the wayside. Women have evolved, but society isn't teaching men how to catch up. Undergraduate enrollment here in the states is now 60/40 women to men, with young men being much more likely to attempt suicide than young women as well (and a whole host of other problems).
This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game; when I talk to my fellow therapists about raising up men, it's assumed (and loudly vocalized) it must come at the cost of women's rights. No! We can raise everyone up. We can invigorate and support minority groups in their fight for equality without having to also put some other group down! There isn't a ceiling on the resource that is joy.
P.S. The most chilling part of the infographic you provided about entertainment is the spot where the source says "Did you know half of all waking hours are now spent engaged in entertainment? Learn more about how this might impact your brand." It would be like saying "half of all waking hours are now spent laying on the couch, learn more about how this affects your store's furniture sales."
A very good article, I mean really, but . . . (well, there had to be a 'but'!) . . .
What does an ordinary man, like your humble reviewer here, do with all this? I mean, I'm not bound for glory in politics or on a corporate board, I'm just a reasonably intelligent man who eschews wealth and profile for reasons of principle and taste (not to mention laziness) and who is doing his best to give his teenage son a decent baseplate in life.
But how do I respond to the world as it is presented in so many publications and YouTube videos, and with particular poignancy in this piece of yours? I can continue buying books, CDs, vinyl, and the odd DVD of an cinema classic so my home stays a bastion of a departing 'culture'. Maybe buy a new home further out of town in someplace inconspicuous. However retreating or circling the wagons rarely wins the day unless the cavalry shows up. But do we have any cavalry left? Or even one guy riding a white horse? Hell, even Sancho Panza on a donkey is starting to seem too much to ask for.
My point is, I find myself going ever inward, focused on old ways and things, essentially turning my back on the future. This may be healthy for individuals, at least in the short term, but it's no way to run a society. You feel like you're hiding with a candle under a blanket inside a madhouse. You spend your time muttering and snorting into your walrus moustache over things that you read online. I've led my life according to the dictum 'never a leader nor a follower be' (actually I think it's 'never a lender nor a borrower be' but they mean something similar), but instead of exploring strange new worlds and boldly going where no self-effacing 'person' has gone before, I'm finding myself holed up somewhere waiting for the zombies.
So what are we to do, mate?
>> I’ve grumbled here in the past about tech companies manipulating customers and users instead of serving them. This may seem like a small thing, but the end result is a culture that grows more tyrannical and inflexible with each passing month.
Completely agree. Put a bit differently, something I've noticed frequently is that people who create amazing things tend to have an odd attitude towards money: they tend to have a somewhat cavalier attitude about it, and plow it back into what they're doing.
Disney seemed to take every penny the Disney company made and put it back into the business to the point where, in the early days, the studio was almost always strapped for cash. His personal fortune he put on the line to build DisneyLand. Musk, whatever you think of him, took the money he made from PayPal and put it all on the line to create SpaceX and Tesla. Jobs I never heard mention money as a goal, but he sure talked a lot about what technology could do for humanity. (The watch was developed after his death, as it turns out.)
I'm kind of using "pursuit of money as an end" as a proxy for "manipulating rather than serving". But I really think you can feel the shift when a company loses the joy in pleasing its customers and moves over to treating its customers like piggy banks.
The origin of the word "entertain" comes from the Latin inter ‘between’ + tenere ‘to hold’. Entertainment was supposed to "hold us between" the main parts of life. If we are spending half our waking our hours in "suspension", what has our life become about?
We have Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business."
When I spoke of this to a perceptive colleague he replied: " . . . it's not even being 'amused,' it's being distracted to death!" Nowadays it's not even valid "amusement," which might have at least some meager value, but mere distraction . . . OK, let's see–whats next? And next . . . and next . . .
Ted,
I'm curious as to what the definition of "entertainment" is. Reading a book? Reading a Substack post? Commenting on one? Visiting a museum?
I couldn't find the definition. It would be helpful to know if the definition is available.
robertsdavidn.substack.com/about (free)
We're also drowning iin STORIES... three acts, a hero, a challenge, triumph at the end and everyone goes home. The dramatic structure has seeped into just about every human interaction, especially political.
But life isn't a story. It's make-believe. Trying to make life fit the requirements of story is a losing game.
Not me buddy! 🙂
I’ll switch my brain off sometimes. Everybody needs a break. But if you’re a creator in any way, self-discipline and live of the craft usually take up much spare time, as it should. Balance is always good.
Google is a business, with shareholders - employees and many people to answer to. Of course they are going to tweak their products to be efficient money making machines, this is what is expected of someone their size. Reality is ethical business do not thrive on the same level as unethical ones, so support the small ones. As much as I am falling in love with Substack, I hope they never thrive on the same level as google, it feels different here and I like it.
You know, I was raised by a man who wasn't toxically masculine. He had scarlet fever as a young child, was sickly for a long time afterward, and as the youngest of four brothers his mother claimed him to help her in the kitchen.
In consequence, he could cook and sew with the best of them. He was great with kids, too, but I think his father probably was, too. I learned it from him. His gender presentation was clearly and obviously masculine, but behaviorally, like me, he was pretty androgenous. Pretty much right in the middle.
There is a path here to follow, but it's not a path that gets a lot of attention. The whole "loud and proud" thing is what gets eyeballs, whereas compassion and empathy doesn't. That's what's making it hard for men, they don't see the alternative. Though it is there.
I think it's scary that half of waking hours are now dedicated to entertainment. Don't get me wrong; I love entertainment! But as my Latin teacher taught me, "ne quid nimis", or "nothing in excess". And THAT is an excessive amount of time. Also, when I think of it, it reminds me of a book I had to read as an undergrad: Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". In short, the book points to a dystopian future in which our politics would suffer because we're all so entertained and amused by tv (the book was written in '85) that we fail to notice that our liberal democracy is slipping away from us. One thing's sure: the more our collective time is taken up with entertainment, the less time we're spending doing EVERYTHING else in our lives (or doing it only in halves as we try to divide our attention between a Netflix series and whatever loved ones we might be watching it with). Neil Postman didn't have an answer for this, and nor do I.
Each one of these stories you posted revealed so many interesting trends. Your a cultural forensic as well as a music historian.
This stuff is all disturbing. As a James Brown fan, I particularly dislike the idea of Universal making AI-driven simulacrum of his music. Do they not understand how unique he was as a singer, songwriter and producer? His kind of skill cannot be easily reproduced by technology.
With respect to the effect of songs that exceed 10 minutes, if you question just how immersive this can be, allow me to direct your attention to the album "Concierto." The sextet is therein is led by guitarist Jim Hall, accompanied by Paul Desmond, Chet Baker, Roland Hanna, Ron Carter and Steve Gadd. One of the comments that accompanies this video captures its aesthetic perfectly: "A 20- minute musical conversation among artists who use their instruments as paint brushes and our senses as their canvas," My all-time favorite jazz piece and it's not even close.
https://youtu.be/iD6k2E61ABY?si=dP6h2fG0vuyT4RzY
The Wired Google antitrust advertising article was taken down for not meeting editorial standards.
Hmmmmm....
Fair enough. But in my work as an engineer, log scales are most effectively used if the underlying mechanism behaves exponentially. Then you get a straight line on log scales and do a bit of interpolation. And you also don't get confused on which direction is increasing when less than unity. There are better ways, imho, to handle the effects of outliers.