Between Empathy and Agency

Conservatives need to validate young people's struggles—and then challenge them to act anyway

Earlier this year there was a brief Internet uprising over the idea that young men need to just take one of those amazing Panda Express assistant manager jobs for $70K. I wrote a piece about this, saying that these kinds of “Man up!" lectures are the sort of thing that turn young men towards the manosphere. It’s an example of what someone called “Spiritual Boomerism.”

Andrew Tate or Panda Express: Which Way Young Man?

I recalled this when watching another recent controversy, this over a clip of Ben Shapiro on a podcast telling people who grew up in New York City but can’t afford to live there anymore that they should just move. The context was socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the recent mayoral race there.

Shapiro says:

[I]f you are a young person and you can’t afford to live here, then maybe you should not live here. I mean, that is a real thing. I know that we’ve now grown up in a society that says that you deserve to live where you grew up, but the reality is that the history of America is almost literally the opposite of that. The history of America is you go to a place where there is opportunity.

Let’s be honest, he’s not wrong when talking about the historic dynamism and willingness to move of Americans.

On the other hand, the same sort of advice applies to politics as it does to young men. If Shapiro genuinely wants young people to stop voting socialist, then he likewise needs to swallow his pride and take actions that will realistically move the needle towards that goal. This isn’t it.

In a world where having the spirit of adventure to move for opportunity is the norm, where most people are doing well and things are high functioning in society, then a kick in the pants for the people who aren’t showing agency is probably what’s needed.

But when there are obvious structural problems around things like housing - and not just in elite global cities like New York - this advice comes across as blaming the victim. As libertarian-leaning Peter Thiel put it in an interview I’ll write more about in this week’s digest:

I think you can reduce 80 percent of culture wars to questions of economics—like a libertarian or a Marxist would—and then you can reduce maybe 80 percent of economic questions to questions of real estate… If you have extremely strict zoning laws and restrictions on building more housing, it’s good for the boomers, whose properties keep going up in value, and terrible for the millennials. If you proletarianize the young people, you shouldn’t be surprised if they eventually become communist.

We need to find a way to calibrate our messaging to young people. In truth, a lot of them are dealing with a variety of problems that were not their fault and which afflicted previous generations to a far less degree: growing up in single parent homes, high housing prices, a two-tier society, convergence in cost-adjusted economic opportunity across regions, etc.

We need to lead by acknowledging the ways that things are difficult for young people, and maybe even how they got screwed.

But even when you are getting screwed, you still have to live your life. You still have some agency. You can act in at least some way, even if it is just, as Jordan Peterson used to famously say back in the day, literally cleaning your room. As a man, you can’t give up. You have to keep trying, trying, pushing, pushing despite the odds.

Maybe we need to be telling more stories about how people who were screwed managed to build a life anyway, along with practical tips to help others do the same.

But what we see is that even when we do that, people don’t want to hear it. This is where I start to sympathize more with Shapiro.

I previously had A. M. Hickman (aka “shagbark_hick” on X) on the podcast to talk about his ultra-frugal life, the way to acquire property in less favored locations, etc.

You might recall that he and his wife just had a baby. This caused him to reevaluate staying in this aging, desolate, and dysfunctional area. He wrote:

This is hitting me like a ton of bricks lately. Parenting in an ultra-high-median-age area feels untenable. The contrast between our baby and the collapsing world around her is intense. It’s one thing to live in a place with no future as an adult, but with kids? It’s dismal.

This of course caused a pile of I-told-you-sos from the online right, who had poured scorn on his idea that you could find affordable property and build a life in a rural area. (Hickman may have been the originator of the idea that a young man could meet his future wife at a gas station).

He responded to this:

It’s not an L, it’s a W.

Because I got my a** up and entered the arena. I took a gamble on one of the most dilapidated, overtaxed, bombed-out places in America.

And I took that gamble because this place is still America. I don’t believe in ceding portions of my homeland to entropic forces because frankly, that’s a loser mentality. I got up, bought some property, and tried something that very few of my contemporaries have tried.

I hyped it up, tried to get the ball rolling, and made myself play on “hard mode” if for no other reason than to make myself stronger. Now, because of it, it’s a certainty we could succeed ANYWHERE if nothing else. And if we leave, I have complete security that I have tried my hardest to save the state that I grew up in -- I’ll never wonder if I should go back home.

Yes, it doesn’t seem like it’d be wise for us to stay here, but I’ve succeeded in articulating a kind of final “limit” to what kinds of bombed-out areas can be saved by one man. I showed the public a corner of America they would never see otherwise. I put my money where my mouth is, promoted a positive, pro-America message and an overall disposition that can be employed to good effect elsewhere in this country. [emphasis added]

What is notable here is the number of people who wanted Hickman to fail. If he succeeded in building a good life this way - and he did succeed in getting married, having a child, and owning property - then that would mean that other young men might be able to succeed if they did something similar.

But some of them don’t want any examples of people in their situation displaying agency and making something happen. They’d rather wallow in misery online. They just want to complain about the way the world has been unfair to them.

They’re right. The world has been unfair. But their choice not to put themselves out there and take a run at making something happen anyway is not something that we should valorize - particularly when they are rooting for other people to fail.

I think about the hippies who settled remote, rural areas like Humboldt County, California or Vermont and turned them into highly desirable real estate. Or about the gays who moved into dangerous urban neighborhoods or abandoned industrial zones and gentrified them.

How often does this happen with conservatives? How often does some conservative see an opportunity, go seize it, and then have others of similar disposition follow? If even a handful of families followed a pioneer like Hickman to some small town, the could turn it into a place like Garberville, CA - a functioning, cool, desirable town.

But they almost never do, except for groups like the Amish.

In Curtis Yarvin’s old writings, the first step in his plan for a new regime to take power was to “Become worthy.” Frankly, conservatives in America have a lot of work to do on that front. This is painful reality that needs to be faced.

We need to recognize that there are big, structural problems are handicapping a lot of young people. We need to admit they exist and work hard to change them. We shouldn’t just tell them to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” But we should expect them to make some effort of their own.

Think about dating and marriage. Yes, the gender dynamics of young people are messed up. Yes, the impact online dating apps sucks. But you can still go out and make an effort to meet women. You can approach them. You can ask them out on a date. Maybe it won’t work out, but even if it doesn’t you can hold your head high for making the ask. Because you passed the test.

The only way win is to actually be in the game.