Prosperity Masculinity

The new men's spaces, falling birth rates, accidental male deaths and more in this week's digest.

I’ve hosted a handful of webinars for subscribers and wanted to let you know the recordings are now easily accessible right here in Substack on the right sidebar to paid subscribers:

• Matthew Stanley: How to Use Blockchain to Mitigate Emerging Transaction Risk

• Andy Higginbotham: How to Become Illegible Online

• Dr. Benjamin Mabry: Eric Voegelin and Political Religions

Speaking of Matthew Stanley, he is looking for work. He is “an experienced leader driving operations for technology startups at the interface between the public and private sectors. His natural strengths in thinking, listening, and communicating have been refined through extensive interaction with a range of client problems in contexts from construction to grants management and beyond. He also serves on the board of a local nonprofit in Sacramento, CA.” See his LinkedIn for more.

The New Men’s Spaces

Anthony Bradley tweeted an interesting video clip from Dan Martell, noting that it illustrates a shift among young men towards what Bradley calls “prosperity masculinity.”

This foots to my own observations. A lot of young guys are now following the “hustle and grind” bros. Andrew Tate was a variation on this theme, but there are many others that are more legitimate and purely focused on self-improvement. Think of it as the modern version of the Tony Robbins motivational seminar. I think it’s fair to say this is an ideology of the self, both in terms of the goals it sets and the way you achieve them.

My impression is that Jordan Peterson’s audience now skews much older and he’s no longer as followed by young men today, who are more likely to be turning into material like this. Also, I sense that Peterson’s audience skews more educated and professional class, whereas the prosperity masculinity guys attract many working class, non-college educated followers. And while the video clip Bradley posted doesn’t show it, I believe this audience is very diverse as well.

And the X user Kruptos posted this meme:

This meme gets at something real. I’ve noted many times that all male spaces have been delegitimized by society, either forced to admit women or targeted for elimination. The net result is that men have been recreating social infrastructure that is not formally organized and thus is illegible.

Become Illegible

One of these is the group chat. There seem to be large numbers of all male group chats out there. This is a way that men are finding community with each other outside the system, as it were. As this meme suggests, that isn’t necessarily going to be viewed as a positive by society.

The Continuing Fertility Decline

The Wall Street Journal ran an article about how efforts to boost fertility have largely failed. The Journal focuses on Norway and Hungary, both of which have generous programs to promoting having kids. Here’s a fertility chart compared to the US and Europe as a whole.

It does seem like Hungary has bounced back a bit from an extended low period.

This chart of the number of women in Norway with at least one child by age is telling.

And John Burn-Murdoch at the Financial Times has another great piece on demographics, noting that we are undershooting even the lowest UN projections for birth rates in many countries around the world.

The stat I thought was most interesting is that Mexico’s birth rate is now lower than the United States.

Best of the Web

American Institute for Boys and Men: Unnatural Male Deaths: Fatal Injuries and the Rise of Drug Overdoses - Here’s one of the charts from this research paper.

Anthony Bradley: Forget the Lies About Waiting: Why marriage and kids early are the ultimate flex

Alan Noble: I Was Homeschooled and Turned Out Fine

The Guardian: ‘What is my faith? What am I doing?’ The American evangelicals ‘deconstructing’ their religion to save it - The Negative World is the cultural context of the deconstruction phenomenon.

WSJ: Legal Marijuana Contains Dangerous Mold. States Approve It Anyway - Legalized pot, is there anything it can’t do?

The Guardian: US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’ and in the Daily Mail: I caught our surrogate drinking alcohol and made her abort the baby - There are no brakes on this train. It’s interesting that the people who dress up in those funny hats at the Capitol are the very ones that support almost literal Handmaid’s Tale utilization of women’s bodies for breeding.

New Content and Media Mentions

I got a mention this week from American Reformer and Brad Littlejohn.

New this week:

• Can Christians Use Critical Theory? - Critical Theory can be a legitimate and powerful tool.

• The Joker's On You - Why Joker: Folie à Deux Turned Against its Fans - Joseph Holmes reviews the new Joker movie.

• And my podcast this week is with the Manhattan Institute’s Stephen Eide on how to help the homeless and others who are farthest down in our society.

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