Author Topic: Men, do you think our gender is declining?  (Read 1613 times)

Silver Wolf

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Men, do you think our gender is declining?
« on: August 13, 2011, 05:18:53 PM »
First of all sorry for any grammatical errors in the following text. As you all know, English is not my native language.

Now... The topic :

I'd like you to take a look at this:

http://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge.html

And then I'd like to you to answer some of these questions. Feel free to add your own thoughts.


What's your opinion? Do you think that our gender is declining?

Unfortunately, I think that he's right... Apparently, we don't do anything in order to improve ourselves but we still expect perfect results. And ironically everyone's afraid of failure and responsibilities... From my point of view, it looks like we're running in circles instead of facing the problem head-on.

What happened to honesty, chivalry, integrity and similar values?
Being a selfish asshole is the point of our new society? Devaluing and abusing others gives you a sense of power?


Your thoughts?

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Jubal

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Re: Men, do you think our gender is declining?
« Reply #1 on: August 13, 2011, 06:31:16 PM »
Are men in decline? Actually, it's the wrong question. My view is that he's taking a variety of factors affecting society as a whole and applying them simply to guys.

I think he has some valid points; the games industry is rapidly becoming something of a bugbear of mine. Essentially, larger games companies are churning out high detail rat-pulling-a-lever games, games that can be played an awful lot without deeper thought over strategy, design, or other useful factors. The internet can be a useful way of stimulating debate, improving knowledge and disseminating information, but that requires those of us who want to use it that way to go on a real offensive against the dumb-ternets. Gaming is hitting women as well as men, mind, though men seem to by and large be worse hit.

As for pornography, I think that we have to take it more seriously as an issue. As an example, requiring genuine proof of age (not just a disclaimer) to access over-18 sites and cracking down on the illegal end of the market. I think that like any other industry, the porn industry has to accept that given the power it not has, that comes with responsibilities. I'm not sure I'd say that it's causing a "decline of men", though - it is making it more difficult for some people, particularly in forming relationships, but moralising types are often overstating the issue.

I think the expectation of results is a Euro-American societal issue, not a gender one. It's also the fact that we keep trying to shoe-horn people into the sorts of jobs they're just not suited for, the loss of manufacturing and manual work in the UK for example has meant that people who aren't fitted to University are usually either flipping Burgers and getting paid just enough to survive or are on benefits and NOT getting paid enough to survive. There are major failings in our education system; again, boys are more affected than girls due perhaps to societal expectations but the problem is in the education system rather than anything specifically to do with gender.

As to the latter question... I wholly agree. Honesty, chivalry, integrity - where are they now? This is a problem so compounded that girls are part of it too, there simply isn't an expectation that guys WON'T be douchebags in a lot of places. Materialism and a ratrace anarchocapitalist (I overstate it, but not as much as I'd like to be doing) societal model is killing us, purely and simply.
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