The Fritz Letter: November 24, 2024

Our young men and boys are drowning

Nov 24, 2024

What’s On My Mind This Week

Fathers in the 90s and 2000s played a significant role in the men’s mental health crisis.

Working class men all over America demanded that their sons learn to fall in line, behave, get good grades, and sculpt themselves into perfect white collar drones instead of teaching them to embody physical courage and transform the world around them with their hands.

All because they wanted to brag about their sons’ prestigious careers in a world where physical jobs and trades were seen as roles for people who couldn’t “make something of themselves.”

This of course wasn’t all fathers — it was primarily high IQ middle class fathers from blue collar families who missed out on higher education for financial reasons, and they didn’t want their sons to get “trapped” doing the same dangerous, dirty work they had done.

Many of these men likely also wanted to live vicariously through their sons — getting a taste of the “success” they’d always dreamed of.

This was before the trumpets of American decline sounded in 2008, and so no one had any real idea how corrupt politics, education, and the financial world had become.

These fathers didn’t know their sons would end up graduating in droves with lofty certifications but few real skills, and that they would spend the most important years of their adult lives underemployed.

They didn’t know their sons would end up rootless, disconnected from the world, unmotivated, depressed, and more suicidal than previous generations.

The thing is, the education system isn’t built to allow men to thrive.

Men and boys tend not to fall neatly into line — unless they’re unifying around a higher goal and held in check by significant physical and mental power differentials (military, police, gangs, families).

This makes bureaucracies like school, government, and the white collar world difficult environments for the masculine mind. In these systems, young men are set up for failure.

The solution of the last 40 years has been to reduce the masculine drive in boys by systematically training them to be “well-behaved”: sitting still, staying quiet, avoiding conflict, and never asserting themselves.

Stifling masculine expression at a young age has created a massive Jungian Shadow in the minds of men and boys from Gen Alpha, Gen Z, and Millenials.

Now, let’s take a brief look at Nietzsche.

According to Nietzsche, people progress through phases of life: Camel (collective-minded beast of burden), Lion (individual-minded warrior fighting perceived oppression); Child (balanced creative soul with many things to learn and much love to give).

Nietzsche’s Lion is locked in perpetual combat with a Dragon named “Thou Shalt,” which represents rules without reasoning — “whats” without “whys.” The irony of this is that Lions can’t fight Dragons. All they can do is wage war and destroy their environment while the Dragon soars above, untouchable.

The riots that unfolded in 2020 were a sign that many of these young people have fully transformed from Camels to Lions.

We’ve been undergoing this mass transition since approximately 2012: tearing things apart and calling it progress.

But I think we’ve reached the peak and we’re starting to return to balance.

Part of healing is understanding where we went wrong.

Young boys can’t spend all their time in school and studying. They also need to spend time working on the family property with their fathers, uncles, and grandfathers.

They need to dig holes, haul wood, and swing hammers — and they also need to learn math, reading, and music.

They need to get stung by bees and cut by barbed wire — and they also need to tackle challenging texts and learn how to hone their ideas against constructive criticism.

These activities give them roots in the world and strengthen their minds so that they won’t be blown about by the forces that will exploit them when they become adults.

If we don’t start giving young men and boys the experiences their souls crave, they’re only going to to keep retreating further into video games, phones, and drugs — and then seeking final escape when they decide that their futures will be too painful to bear.

And it will be our fault.

Not theirs.

The water is rising, and our boys are drowning — and we won’t be around to paddle the lifeboats forever.

It’s time for us to get in the water and teach them to fight the current for themselves.

Yeehamaste, folks 🤠

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What I’m Working On This Week

Every time I complete something, I find myself in a state of anxiety, because I don’t know what to focus on next.

Now that my book is out, I’ve returned to that anxious headspace.

I think part of the reason I end up here is that I’m terrified of wasting my time, since I know it is limited.

The irony is, though, that when I make directional decisions while in this state of anxious panic, I almost always end up spending a few weeks working on something that I end up shelving or abandoning within 30 days.

On the flip side, if I don’t capture my creative energy and drive it towards something, I can end up sitting around not doing much of anything — just drinking wine, scrolling social media, and playing Stardew Valley.

But I’ve learned that one of the best antidotes to anxiety, for me, is a plan.

So that’s what I’ve been trying to focus on this week.

I’m not trying to do stuff. I’m not trying to make progress.

Instead, I want to think critically about my goals and opportunities, and then chart the next phase of my creative journey.

There are 3 key things I’m thinking about right now:

Building a 16-week course on a complex topic like Stoicism, Masculinity, or Power
Returning to YouTube to supplement my Substack with video
Relaunching my interview podcast to bring in outside perspective and learn froom people who know much more than I do about interesting things

But I’m also open to working on other projects.

So, I’d like to hear from you:

Great Content I Found In The Wild

This article from Scott Galloway delivers a brilliant and nuanced take on the divisiveness in US politics and the factors that lead to Trump’s win.

I’ve been speaking about this for a while: young men have been largely abandoned by Western society, in a similar way to how young lions are pushed out of the pride the moment they grow a mane and start wanting to assert themselves.

This has led to a few things:

Some young men are dropping out of everything and wasting away to addiction and video games because it hurts less than being told daily that they are toxic, worthless, garbage standing in the way of “progress”
Some young men are becoming women because the transition is a ticket into a protected class which can help them climb the social ladder higher and faster
Some young men are becoming the monsters they’ve been painted as; if the world wants to treat you like some twisted demon, and refuses to listen when you say you’re not, then why not just become what they already say you are?
Many young men are rallying around media personalities and politicians who do not hate them for the biology they were born with, and instead call them to rise to their potential — which requires them to not play nice with the current system of staying in school and then crossing your fingers to get a white collar job that doesn’t suck

The Menaissance has begun, but it still doesn’t have a clear path forward. Over the next 10 years, I think we’ll see a rise in masculism, to meet and complete feminism, and we will start laying the foundation of a new golden age of more balanced masculinity and femininity.

What I’m Listening To This Week

I’ve been in a classical mood, so here’s some moody classical.

Buy My Book

The Testimony of Jacob Cohen is a cosmic horror story about an archeologist on an Antarctic expedition who discovers a mysterious ziggurat that hides terrifying secrets from a forgotten past.

It draws inspiration from the narrative style of Dracula, the real-life Endurance expedition led by Ernest Shackleton, and Dionysian cult mysticism, along with modern astronomy, astrobiology, and mycology.

Buy the Book

The Fritz Letter