Ross Douthat’s Continuing Crisis of Manhood
By Ross Douthat finds that Ted Kaczynski, Silvio Berlusconi, and Cormac McCarthy were all alienated from late-modern civilization because that civilization is hostile to masculinity. And why is that? I’ll let Douthat answer:
The root of the problem seems clear enough, even if the solutions are contested: The things that men are most adapted for (or socialized for, if you prefer that narrative, though the biological element seems inescapable) are valued less, sometimes much less, in the peacetime of a postindustrial civilization than in most of the human past.
In a phrase, when we talk about traditional modes of manhood, we’re often talking about mastery through physical strength and the capacity for violence. [Emphasis in original]
Douthat is taking an essentialist view of manhood. Manhood is physical strength and violence, and physical strength and violence are manhood.
Essentialism is easy and dangerous. We’re seeing a lot of it these days, particularly in relation to gender: the bathroom laws and other attacks on trans people, the claim to originalism by the Supreme Court, burning textbooks that contain evil thoughts.
Purity of Essence was General Jack D. Ripper’s concern in the film “Dr. Strangelove,” and he sent the planes with the nukes to destroy the Commies who were destroying Purity of Essence/ Peace on Earth. General Ripper’s argument – that fluoride was destroying POE – is not different from Robert Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine denial. Another sort of essentialism.
Biological gender is a continuum, as are the characteristics that are associated with the two extremes, although the continua of the characteristics are not tied tightly to the gender continuum. In other words, genitals and hormones vary, as do personality characteristics.
Douthat clumped together a strange trio. Kaczynski and McCarthy glorified pointless violence, but Berlusconi seemed more interested in a life of indulgence. Kaczynski was explicitly opposed to late modern civilization, the other two not so much.
Civilization requires men to be tamed, says Douthat, who goes on to show how he thinks these three resisted being tamed. Kaczynski indeed resisted. Berlusconi took everything he could from our late modern civilization. McCarthy offered, through the channels of that civilization, a horrendous vision of violence. Douthat types on a computer for a major newspaper, safely within the bounds of that civilization.
Douthat and McCarthy make a show of their masculine essentialism, but they take all the benefits of civilization. McCarthy was emeritus at the Santa Fe Institute for the last decade or so of his life. SFI is not Kaczynski’s cabin in the woods of Montana. The physical setting is an estate willed to SFI by one of Santa Fe’s wealthy. It’s beautiful, with views that make downtown Santa Fe properly minuscule for the abstract thinkers. The kitchen prepares excellent lunches and hors d’oeuvres.
Blogger Hilary Bok (aka hilzoy) a while back suggested in a Twitter thread that men might be able to find their way by trying to be good people, responsible and reliable, helpful and kind to others, leaving the essentialism out of it.
That decayed, disordered, and hostile environment that men are slogging through and hanging on, barely keeping alive to pass their lack of vision on to their sons? It’s self-pity.