This is not some kind of attempt to label "natural" roles (except that, typically, women can give birth and men can fertilize eggs), but rather to say that the conservative image of man as warrior or worker ONLY is ridiculously naive and a bit condescending.
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I realize I'm always putting myself at risk of being branded as a gender fundamentalist, since they employ such arguments in bad faith.
But I think it's a real antidote to male despair to realize we can take risks with fewer repercussions than women, and to embrace that.
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And not, for example, that you have to be some fictional "alpha male" to get something good out of your life.
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Peterson is completely right to point to male depression and suicide rates being very problematic.
It is true that the traditional roles are dying, and no new roles are offered up. This is a problem.
He just happens to be offering bad solutions.
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Ironically this doesn't seem to be much of a problem in Norway, both as it is and as I remember it, so I can understand if it's a confusing premise.
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I do think that part of his appeal is coming at that question directly. The moment in the NYT piece where he tells that young client “of course you are depressed, your situation sucks” is very affecting.
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Exactly. I've wondered about doing the same thing, minus the conservative crank angle, but, in an ironic echo of Peterson, I hadn't thought my life was together enough to qualify.
Maybe in a decade or so.
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Out of curiosity, why is the popular answer to this question typically something about taking responsibility for yourself, and not about making the bigger system better?
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The latter is orders of magnitude more difficult than the former.
However, they're not unrelated.
I always love citing this: vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?
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Further, personal example: I am by no means a perfect husband or man, but I know at least one close friend of my wife's who was inspired to leave an abusive man because of our healthier relationship model.
She now has a supportive, caring boyfriend, who is a friend of mine.
As Havel posits, this effect is visible. We learn socially.
If you concentrate enough healthy behavior in one place, it starts having network effects. I do believe that.
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If anything, Havel should know. The Czechs didn't need violence to depose the Soviets; they just decided to collectively not give a fuck.
Of course things would have been different if the Soviets hadn't already collapsed, but that's not my point: small scale, big impact.
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