In a practical sense, in today’s climate of distrust, and just stubborn ignorance, no one wants to even listen to each other, let alone devise together a law that will equally tell all parties what to do and what not to do — Fire Ologist

Right, well said. I appreciate people using philosophy to analyze our current moment. It seems the best equipped discipline to make sense of things, right now. So many disciplines have been completely captured, ideologically. The rigour of the thinking required by philosophy contrasts with the rest of the humanities, the arts, whatever you want to call this collective, who are guilty of all sorts of academic failings right now.

This is the air we breathe, and I assume a lot of people here on TPF are aware of, adjacent to or even profoundly affected by this woke capture of many institutions. This goes far beyond education. Morality via algorithim, delivered via screen.

So applying the tools of philosophy to the culture wars is fascinating to me as a lay social scientist appalled by the state of the field. Not to sound partisan. I am a conscientious objector. It's just that my entire adult life in Canada has been lived in progressive environments, my employer is arguably the wokest institution on the planet - this is the gestalt I can best analyze.

"Good to be moral" is not how I would put it. Good to be good?

"Seems to me, even if we are certain about metaphysical absolute objective truth, and certain we have found it in the moral code we consent to with our whole hearts, we are still able to render this moral system futile".

I always think about William James and the 'Will to Believe" on subjects such as this.

What if we changed your postulation to "not-at-all certain"? Certainty doesn't matter. The lack of objectivity is not a central problem for me here.

I resonate with your language, the phrase "the spectre of futility creeps" is dynamite metaphor, nicely done. Brings to mind pessimism, which I discovered by accident ordering "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" thinking I was ordering a horror story, and instead getting the only work of philosophy by this dark, underground horror writer I wanted to check out.

It's a perfect marriage for me, the language of horror expressing the emptiness of existence in a world in which there is no meaning. I do some creative writing as a hobby and I find pessimistic philosophy a great source of dark inspiration - I would love to have shared, say, parts of True Detective season one with a high school philosophy class.

Again, I'm self taught, so there are gaps in my basic philosophical knowledge no doubt, but the 'pessimist' philosophers Ligotti describes sound to me like the logical end game for a world that ceases to aspire to morality, or shared humanity, or goodness, or whatever and however we can best define that, right now.

A perpetual creation of the world we wish to see? Does that make me an existentialist?

The pessimists Ligotti describes, along with Ligotti himself (a lay philosopher), present a bleak vision, and the potential that the pessimists, or anti-natalists might be 'right'? That risk, however small, is enough for me to 'make the choice' to believe. I know that is not the language James uses to describe it, but that's the concept I endorse, I suppose?

And then I guess, to try and engage with people and yourself, perpetually, in an act of creation. Sounds exhausting...

The pace of the conversation for me is fast at TPF, being largely disconnected from the online world, and somewhat out of practice with certain thinkers and terms, but It's posts like yours that are challenging me to think hard before replying!

Yeah. I primarily work with 5-12 year olds in education. I'm the only bloke in my work cohort. You work with kids yourself right? Do you also think that the boys are picking up relatively traditional norms - in the playground - at the same time as being demanded to follow other ones -in the classroom-? I think it's a great thing that all the kids I'm aware of are getting eg courses on self expression and emotion language, but the boys still can't use it without stigma. There also still seems to be that element of casual violence among the working class boys, which is still socially rewarded. — fdrake

Hi fdrake,

Sorry it took me a couple of days to reply.

I do (did) work with high school kids. There are more male adults in HS generally, mostly teachers - your PE teachers, tech, sometimes math and science. I teach English and Social Sciences, and those departments are heavily female. I did some coaching too, likely the environment in which I saw the most 'unguarded' or natural kid-behaviour, but to be honest, I saw more 'teen' behaviour than specifically gendered behaviour.

I guess where I saw gendered behaviour most was in the classroom, in what they were interested in / engaged by. High school kids have more options to pursue their own interests, but everybody has to take English every year, for example, and some of the boys have a less-favourable view of reading.

But reading - what we call literature - is as gendered as anything. Boys, for the entirety of my career, and per the literature I've seen, have been more likely to enjoy 'informational' or 'task-oriented' reading, which we often describe as 'not literature', whereas 'literature' - fiction - requires empathizing, provides no clear, tangible benefits (now I know how to ...) - things that girls are better at than boys

This isn't socialized behaviour I'm talking about, this is more evolutionary biology, and I know that discipline offends some people who feel that it delegitimizes their sense of agency, but that to me is misunderstanding the social sciences. On the aggregate, yes, there are behaviours that are more typical of boys - running around, taking risks, needing to move, requiring concrete reasons, and of girls - empathy, social intelligence, and so on.

I mean, just look at a class of grade 9s. Many of the girls appear to be young women, and most of the boys remain boys. Do you notice this at any point with your cohort?

So what we call 'gendered' behaviour is often not - it's natural behaviour, in an environment better suited to female success than male.

Even the 'emotion language' topic is 'feminized' or 'gendered' female, even though that's not a thing this subject addresses - we are only concerned with gendered 'male' behaviour, since 'maleness' is the problem, per the consensus. The entire project seems to be making the boys more like girls.

Not to mention the whole 'Bad Therapy' argument, Abigail Shrier's book, condemning the therapy culture that permeates our children's lives and which may be actually causing the spikes in youth mental health.

In other words, talking about your emotions all the time leads to hypersensitivity, rumination, etc.

All of this is generalization - there are definitely kids who benefit from emotional literacy, girls who can't sit still and boys who love Jane Austen.

I imagine it might be actually harder for boys your student's age to express emotions? By the time I was getting them, it seemed to have been relatively normalized.

Even in terms of student violence, I don't see a major distinction in terms of gender, which is alarming. Yes, social class is an indicator, but there was a distinct, female style of violent conflict. As for raw numbers, I don't know anything recently, and its definitely still more 'male' behaviour, but it feels like the girls are closing the gap.

How do these thoughts relate to your experiences with the younger students, and in a different country?

My assumption is that the WEIRD countries all have some sort of ideological capture of educational institutions. Here in Toronto, I work(ed) for what I jokingly started describing as the wokest institution in the world, the Toronto District School Board. I might be right in that joke.

Do you, as a guy, feel any differently from your colleagues on any of these subjects? Do you feel empowered to offer opinions or to disagree with orthodoxy? And did you catch that series, "Adolescence"? It seems of the gestalt that we are discussing here, and I thought it pretty good, certainly better than a lot of the hot takes it's generated in the 'press'.

Sorry for the long post, I was so engaged reading 'Bad Therapy' I had a lot of thoughts!

I think the worst instance of the above I heard, again just this year, is in the context of body dysmorphia. Body dysmorphia among young boys is at parity with young girls these days. The response I heard was, paraphrase, "well men will just have to get used to doing what women have all this time".

There is a lot of needless combativeness. — fdrake

I agree with you completely. I've heard and read that paraphrase, in various incarnations, more times than I can remember. Rhetorically, two wrongs do not make a right. Pragmatically, 'suck it up buttercup' alienates, rather than influences.

I just finished reading Toure Reed's "Toward Freedom", about the dangers of 'race reductionism', as a barrier to the sort of project that actually does/did provide material improvements for minority groups, with his focus on black Americans.

He sees identitarianism as a tool, wielded by neoliberals, to divide people - poor and working-class blacks, whites, others - from the fight against class inequality, which of course would threaten the status and privilege of said neoliberals. (Not to suggest some sort of Machiavellian mastermind behind the curtain - Reed argues that much of this thinking is well-intentioned).

I think this concept of 'reductionism' can be extended to consider a 'gender reductionism' trend, or really, a 'marginalized reductionism'. This might just be a fancy way of saying 'wokeness' but I think the flaws in wokeness are central to this discussion, and more predictive of a male rightward shift than misogyny.

11 points, 22 points... and 101 points. Which should be our primary concern? — Banno

The utilitarian concern should be the primary objective. But Banno, I disagree with your implication that this means it is a distraction to improve upon problems of a smaller scale.

Not that males failing in schools is small in scale. Sure, you can quote outliers such as boys in math, but to imply that there are 'mixed results' is flat out wrong. Boys graduate less, perform worse, earn fewer degrees, are punished more often and more severely than they used to be - not simply a moving target problem comparing boys to girls, but to compare boys to previous generations of boys. They dislike school more, read less. They encounter far fewer male role models - one of the only domains in which having someone who 'looks like me' teaching seems to make a difference.

My critique of Reeves is the common one that he is blaming schools for general societal problems. It's a strategy adopted by folk - politicians - so they can ignore the actual issue by blaming the teaching profession. — Banno

Have you read the book? I don't think this is a fair characterization at all. I am a high school teacher, and I'm far more likely to blame schools than Reeves.

Reeves is milquetoast ... he is as non threatening / accusatory as possible, in the book and in his public appearances, and in contrast to some of those who disagree with him, the "I bathe in male tears" types. Reeves talks about this at length in fact, his feminism, his support for the way things are changing, the political risk he was talking in even raising the subject at all. He bends over backwards NOT to point fingers.

Check out his appearance on the Daily Show a few weeks back. Check out "Are Men OK" in the Nation, March 11.

To try and tie my ramblings together, debates such as this one are driven by angry extremists, those with the 'subterranean norms', coming from both ends of the political spectrum. Reeves himself said he was writing his book for average moms with boys. Focusing on the awfulness of Andrew Tate and Donald Trump while ignoring, say, the bugbear in Hoff Sommers book, Carol Gilligan, and her ilk is clearly flawed thinking, but I would go further and say that focusing on the extremists, in any direction, as if they are informative of average people, is needless division.

Banno, when you wave at class inequality, that is where I find common ground with you. "No Politics but Class Politics"?

Hey Banno, I am glad girls are doing well in STEM. One thing that’s missing from this conversation is the recognition that there do seem to be strong sex-based preferences in terms of areas of study and careers. Women and girls placing more value on personal and family time. Subject matters of higher interest. I can’t think of any Specific benefits for having both male and female engineers, but what we know about education with children does show real value for students to have both. So the fact that we get programs for girls in STEM but not boys in HEAL reveals that this is not about the advantages of diversity in all fields, but rather the advancement of a political belief based on oppression and victimhood, a political belief that is based in some objective truth, but blind to its own limitations.

Richard Reeves goes through this issue at length in his book. He argues that considerations of sex and gender do not need to be viewed as zero-sum, but due to political trends, conversations about the struggles of young men and boys are often framed as threatening to the progress of girls and women.

Remember, we are talking about boys and girls here. In our public schools, boys have been falling behind for decades, and yet people seem to be oblivious to this fact, or worse, seem to think it’s warranted retribution. Again, we are talking about children.

Are you aware of how far behind boys and men are in the past decades? Deaths of despair? Educational outcomes? Perhaps you are. I imagine that if you polled your people, the average response would be that girls are more disadvantaged in school still.

You can’t address a problem that you don’t recognize exists, and I sincerely worry that the majority of my teaching colleagues do not realize this, despite the decades of data.

Hello philosophy forum!

This is an interesting conversation, and an important one, but I don't see much awareness of the fact that women raise our children, boys and girls, more than men do, and that some of the 'crisis' of masculinity can be perceived as a preference for 'female' values, by females, in feminized spaces.

The 'caregiver burden' is argued as evidence for the patriarchy, so surely this implies agreement that moms parent more than dads, in general. And we can count the number of teachers. I'd be happy to provide stats in anyone wants, but two thirds to three quarters of your kids teachers being female, throughout their lives, is a fair estimation most places. Certain boys are not well-served by a lack of male role models. Surely, this is not contentious?

I know I can get in trouble here if not careful to provide evidence, but it is beyond dispute that boys have been falling behind girls in schools, the first major socializing institution in the lives of most people in the WEIRD world, for decades. Christina Hoff Sommers outlines this with "The War Against Boys" in 2000, and Richard Reeves re-confirmed the same trends in 2022 with his "Of Boys and Men". But those are just two of many worthy titles.

I certainly saw this from the outset of my high school teaching career in 1997. Anecdotal, but anecdote has value when it illustrates statistics.

One thing I appreciate about Reeves is his insistence that if moderates can't offer compelling alternatives, radicals will fill the void. So if it's between 'boys are inherently toxic' and 'Andrew Tate'? It's not like we are offering boys much of a choice in the first place.

I would suggest that the majority of people generally worried about 'problems of masculinity' are worried about it from the perspective of women, but in so doing they are failing to recognize how harmful constructions of masculinity and femininity both are for men and boys as well as women and girls, and to what degree women are also responsible for these constructions.

It should go without saying that gendered violence IS dramatically more of a male-caused problem, that there are many legit, negative examples of 'the patriarchy', especially in powerful 'elite' males. This shouldn't prevent us from discussing the less visible problem. I find it strange to call boys underperforming girls in schools 'less visible' given how striking the data is, but this topic was almost never addressed in my decades teaching.

Sociological arguments that men are 'afraid' of seeing their power base diminished strike me as particularly inane. Certain elites perhaps, but the majority of people on the planet, male and female and however else people choose to define themselves, simply do not think this way.

The average incel, for example, is not operating from a position of 'power'. This is where intersectionality fails - only certain intersections count. Class is downplayed, unless as evidence of the greater (identity-based) evils of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. Certain elements are left out of these conversations entirely. For example, 'beauty privilege' is likely more 'objective' - measurable - than 'racial privilege'.

It takes tremendous educational privilege to understand intersectionality, another example.

I see much of this debate as technocratic. Technocrats' educational privilege is why they get to determine who gets hired, what gets taught in schools, what laws are passed, which professions need affirmative action, and for whom, etc. Intersectionality can offer value, but to argue, as many technocrats do, that our public education is still primarily patriarchal, for example, is nuts.

We need programs, still, for girls in STEM, despite decades of females dominating education in general, but programs for boys in HEAL is misogyny? If you doubt me, simply Google Reeves' book and read some reviews.

From the first review I found after typing that, in The Guardian, the opening sentence:

"Something is rotten in the state of manhood. Guilty of the crime of patriarchy, it is also tainted by toxic masculinity, the belief that most social ills – everything from murder and rape to online abuse – stem from men being men".

And this is one of the fair reviews! Reeves himself is a centrist, kind to a fault towards those that disagree with him, and yet if you head to Reddit, say, it's pretty common for he and his arguments to be outright derided. Hoff Sommers is in the same boat.

Frankly, what other identity discipline is dominated by people outside of that identity? The majority of modern books about men are written by women, which is literally unimaginable for any other demographic group outside of 'white people'.

Is evolutionary biology so tainted, 'coded right', that we can't acknowledge that as a species with two primary sexes, (leaving intersex and trans out as the statistical minority they are, for the sake of simplicity) one sex live lives as smaller and physically weaker on average than the other? And that sex is the one who carries and births the next generation? Who are then best equipped to form the original primary bond with the child? And that there are evolutionary differences in the sexes as a result of this, that exist in conversation with the 'social construction' of gender?

Not to excuse bias, ignore abuse, or suggest that past norms should dictate the present. But these roles, male and female, are essential, historical aspects of human existence. Those don't change quickly.

If one acknowledges some role for biology, it's no wonder our schools prefer 'feminized' behaviour. Given that girls are more empathetic, at younger ages, than boys, they are better behaved. They are more mature, thus able to integrate with others earlier. They are less prone to physical explosions of energy, so as we reduce recess time and non-academic course options in our schools, they adapt more quickly than boys.

When doing sociology, we are not predicting what one individual will do, nor why they will do it. We are charting what happens when groups of people engage in certain similar types of behaviour. It is by definition a 'soft' science. Too often, I fear, we forget that, and ascribe problematic morals to members of
groups based solely on their membership in said group.

Long story short, I think that, to the extent that we have problems with masculinity, it is because we are failing to raise boys AND girls both. The hideous Tates of the world are symptoms, not causes.

My fourth comment here on the PF. I hope I'm managing to do this respectfully!

Hello Mr. Murray,
(16 years of Catholic school and that’s the only way I can address high school teachers — Fire Ologist

Hi Fire Ologist, thanks for the welcome, and that's funny - I still have students who call me Mr. Murray, despite my promising them they can call me what they want when they graduate. Families, careers, and they still call me Mr. ...

I appreciate the respect shown teachers though, and I am happy you had that inspiring experience in English class. Not everybody has those.

what would be the point of the whole discussion if we could not distill how to act and how not to act towards each other in some form that we can all share and look to — Fire Ologist

Well said. I think my attraction back to philosophy has come from precisely this .... it seems to me that so much of what passes as morality is simply an 'act of faith', which is fine if we acknowledge it to be incomplete, a work in progress, and that all we aspire towards is synthetic, in a sense. 'Many paths, one truth'.

This synthesizing project is relational, based on reason, responsibility and a striving towards objectivity - in keeping with your model. I always saw my role as a high school teacher, welcoming students from seemingly everywhere, as working towards this synthesis.

But to aspire towards this, one has to remain 'whole-hearted and half-sure'.

To be specific, I have major problems with 'wokeness', which is often presented as a completed project, one that has come to absolutely dominate our educational institutions in a remarkably short time. The 'woke' have set out to 'dismantle' objectivity as white supremacist, which, per your 'required playing pieces', undermines the entire project. The woke prioritize 'lived experience' - anecdote - above all else, but only the lived experience of the 'marginalized'.

I find this dangerous, the moving target of 'marginalization', the refusal to play with the pieces we've played with, as human beings, since we first started thinking about morality. It seems to me that the response to this is synthetic - to identify shared values in religion, philosophy, cultural tradition, science, storytelling, etc and to bring the best of the various means of thinking into conversations with each other.

And I worry about a belief system that appears to be more religious than scholarly, but has managed to claim a scholarly standing that derives from it's own 'inherent' virtuousness.

This is true of all sorts of belief systems, it's just this new one, 'wokeness', that has me wondering what our shared language for moral discussion is / should be.

I spent some time thinking about your post and how to reply, and still find myself on shaky ground. The only conclusion I can come up with is that it is the act of pursuing an 'objective' morality, in free dialogue with others, seems essentially, necessarily 'human', even though the end goal is almost certainly unattainable.

That's my best practice, currently.

What would you recommend for dialogue with people who seem to be playing checkers with a chess set?

a bunch of inborn genetic, biological, neurological, mental, and psychological processes, structures, capacities, drives, and instincts which are modified during development and by experience and socialization. — T Clark

Hey T Clark, thanks for the welcome. I did read your posts, and found myself in agreement with your components of 'human nature', although I was wondering how you would define 'mental'?

I think of this sort of knowledge as an 'act of faith', ultimately. To say that we can define human nature seems impossible to me, given that our understanding of what that means is inevitably evolving.

But just because you have to 'choose' to believe, the act of faith itself being a choice, does not mean you are wrong. Your concept of this might be perfect, somehow, or it could be the best possible given what we know, in this moment, etc. There are many ways this could be the best way to think without it being objectively true.

Hence my use of 'aspirational'. A professor once told me that to be ethical in the face of modern uncertainty was to be 'whole-hearted and half-sure', and that stay stays with me today. I don't know much about the ancient Greeks, but the premise of 'virtue ethics' is, to my understanding, a project of maximizing your potential for good.

To me, we can't 'know' what human nature is, what the right thing to do is, but we can conclude that we are made better by having these 'ideals' to aspire towards, and then acting.

Your Chuang Tzu quote expresses a very similar premise, I believe. It's feels a 'process' philosophy. I find Buddhism similar, and personally appealing, having lived in Japan for a few years and traveled the region in the summers. Visiting all those temples and shrines in Tokyo, and in Thailand, Vietnam, etc, heck, even the churches of England when I was still calling myself a backpacker - all of those experiences helped me to ground my understanding of those religions in physical terms, and it was always the Buddhist temples I was most attracted to.

I struggle with deontological or utilitarian ethics simply due to the impossibility of objectivity, and my being an atheist. There is no 'leap of faith' for me to take. Only philosophically-informed choices to make. (or so I hope!)

But I am all for people, such as yourself, making a thoughtful decision to be relativistic, for a variety of possible reasons. It's only the default relativists I worry about, because it can lead to some collective problems with narcissism and rudderlessness. It's easy to be a lousy relativist. It's hard to be a good one?

"Your open minded and sympathetic attitude about religion is not a popular one here on the forum, which has a record of knee-jerk religious bigotry".

Thanks. Being educated in philosophy outside of the academy, I just looked at the history of philosophy (that I was supposed to be able to deliver to 17 year-olds in one semester), and saw so much done in historical contexts that necessitated an exchange between philosophy and religion that it was impossible for me to imagine disentangling them? I had super diverse classes here in downtown Toronto, including many Muslim students, Orthodox Greeks, etc., given my neighbourhood, and found this a great way to engage them.

I enjoyed thinking about your post.

Hi everyone, I just joined up, and it's conversations like this one that caught my interest in the first place. I came to philosophy through circumstance - I had a chance to take over a retiring teacher's grade 12 philosophy course, and since that would mean I could teach it my way until I retired, if I so desired, I decided to teach myself some philosophy.

Fifteen years later, I've come back to philosophy following some personal losses and trauma, that led to personal dissatisfaction with 'spiritual' answers to moral questions. Reading secular philosophy really helped me get through some dark stuff.

So apologies in advance if I miss something obvious to those with sharper minds than mine, formal academic training, etc. I predict I will make some mistakes... and I hope people point them out to me!

As for the topic, it seems to me like the concept of 'human nature' is in the same category as 'objective morality', in that both are aspirational and unknowable, but worthwhile pursuits nonetheless. It is in pursuing these ideals that we can honor our human nature / act 'morally'.

I also endorse the Sam Harris book, he makes a strong case, and I feel my personal stance is very close to his, except that I do believe religion, (human traditions of morality, as they were developed and situated in time, ever-evolving) and even spiritual traditions such as meditation, that can be practiced in secular fashion, all bring value to the pursuit of an 'objective' morality.

I'm an atheist, but am not hostile to religion itself. Like any ideology or belief system, flawed and imperfect, to my mind, but I respect the 'goodness' of some of the religious people I've known far too much to discount that this is a moral practice with tangible positive outcomes.

Much of my interest in moral philosophy came from my first encounters with moral relativism in 'the wild', at university in the 90s. It seemed that, in the rare circumstances (imagine that today) a professor addressed morality directly in my social sciences and English courses, they were expressing morally relativistic beliefs.

Since then, I've been somewhat repelled by the premise, not as a considered stance by those who have done the work to decide on relativism, but rather as a default premise amongst people who might not think much about anything philosophical. A 'lazy relativism' if you will.

I still think like the high school teacher I was, so I try to think of the 'simplest' way to summarize the subject being discussed - in that spirit, is this not simply a question of whether or not moral relativism is inevitable?