Best Of

@Lionduck said:
At least in the USA, women were part of the workforce. They were, however, restricted in the types of jobs and their levels in the hierarchy were, generally, highly restricted. Property rights, economic rights, political and such were limited or non-existent. Foe economics and work, it was the myth of the "Weaker Sex".
That the opening up of women entering the brauder work force is not what drove prices up. It was, perhaps, a contributory factor, but not the driving force.
In the 1970s, nationally, when women finally achieved the right to control their own finances, the reactive (conservative), ccorporate forces looked at the masses and said, "They are too powerful, we must regain our dominance." Beginning with President Nixon, the corporatists began a long campaign to regain dominance in the economic field through their the political influence. The true collapse began when President Regan, with his pro-corporate and anti-union and "Trickle Down" economics and his termination, in 1987, of the FAIRNESS DOCTRINE which required equal air time for opposing political views.
The power of unions declines as laws were changed to better fulfill the corporate (moneyed) interests, and weaken the political power and influence of the working and middle class. All while corporations consolidated power, politically and economically. Wages stagnated or rose slowly in response to increasing prices while the power elite
saw their slalries and bonuses skyrocket.
Of course, the power influencers and the "movers and shakers" pushed the "Blame" on women and minorities. Minorities have never been the source of economic hardship in this nation. Women have been in the greater workforce in numbers in the USA for over 60 years. They are not the cause of the current situation where two or three jobs can not adequately feed, cloth and house a family.
The lack of the human element in the business equation, the "Profit over People" Corporate (and Billionaire) and the false business mindset and the need to always "Grow or Die"
The current Corporate mindset of Gain without the inclusion of Goodness is the core. There is no problem with personal gain when it includes Gain (Goodness) for the community, the society (the people). Gain, without the human element is GREED.
Corporations, of themselves are not Bad. Profit of itself is not Evil. It is the abuse of the power arising from ever centralizing Corporate power and the emphasis of profit with disregard to the benefit or harm to the people (workers, communities, customers/consumers) where the evil arises.
The Buddhist approach of awareness and concern for the People and the environment, the ecosystems of which we are all a part, is a counter-valence to the greed and arrogance, the MARA we see so much in the business and political elite and others which seems so prominent today.
as individuals, in embracing and opening up the power within are we thus able to affect, to change the power without. A thirteenth century monk said it well:
WHEN THE BODY BENDS, THE SHADOW MUST FOLLOW

Peace to all

I think the big shift started when the idea that the sole mandate for business was to return profits to shareholders. It was in Milton Friedman's 1962 book, but it really started to take hold in the 70s. I think it also has to do with the size of the businesses today too. Many small business still care about their employees, vendors, communities, customers. But if you want to compete with big companies its all about maximizing returns for the shareholders.

But this is a bit of a tangent away from the thread topic. Most of the reasonable concerns I've heard raised about the struggles of men and boys today has little to do explicitly with not having the provider role. I think to the more traditional men I know and some of them make less than their wives and don't seem to care one bit.

Do you know what borders on insanity ?

Canada and Mexico

@RobinH said:
My wife will soon make more money than me. It's not the reason I feel useless, but feeling useless and fearing that she'll eventually leave me is sadly a part of why I keep coming back to Buddhism. I lack true ambitions. The ones people need to climb the corporate ladder and get that raise and get that bonus... I don't really care for a much better life, some financial stability would be nice and I'm keep trying to find some skill I could learn to eventually provide, because starting a family would also be nice, but what I love (art, creative writing) is not very valued in paychecks, it's valued less and less with AI around now and I want to be useful to her and others, but it's really hard seeing that someone you love and care about craves more in life to be happy and not seeing how you could be the person who helps make that happen. Not much to do with the manosphere I suppose, but needing two jobs in a household just to pay the bills and keep a roof above your heads... yeah, that's not great.

I'm sorry this is your situation. Its one of the sad ways the old patriarchal system hurts men too. The old expectations of judging men by their status and ability to earn is still alive in plenty of people, even those who are opposed to the patriarchal norms.

My wife will soon make more money than me. It's not the reason I feel useless, but feeling useless and fearing that she'll eventually leave me is sadly a part of why I keep coming back to Buddhism. I lack true ambitions. The ones people need to climb the corporate ladder and get that raise and get that bonus... I don't really care for a much better life, some financial stability would be nice and I'm keep trying to find some skill I could learn to eventually provide, because starting a family would also be nice, but what I love (art, creative writing) is not very valued in paychecks, it's valued less and less with AI around now and I want to be useful to her and others, but it's really hard seeing that someone you love and care about craves more in life to be happy and not seeing how you could be the person who helps make that happen. Not much to do with the manosphere I suppose, but needing two jobs in a household just to pay the bills and keep a roof above your heads... yeah, that's not great.

What makes me sad about them is that there a genuine problems that men and boys face and the way they weaponize them and turn it into misogyny turns people away from looking at and addressing those problems. For example in education outcomes the gender inequality is worse than it was in the 70s only the genders have swapped in terms of who's doing better and who's falling behind. The people on top of society are still more likely to be men, but the people at the bottom of society are also more likely to be men. More homelessness, greater rates of suicide deaths.

Richard Reeves is a good example of someone who is able to talk about men's issues without the red pill nonsense.

I recently noticed some new kinds of links appearing in my YouTube feed, interviews with people like Jordan Peterson and Rollo Tomassi. I innocently thought I would have a look since it mentioned some kind of Red Pill, a reference to ‘The Matrix’. I found the interview indigestible and instead had a look on Wikipedia what it’s all about… I read the pages on “Red pill”, “Manosphere” and “alt-right pipeline” before getting thoroughly sick of it.

It seems there are quite a few influencers out there who are trying to convince people to move to the right in their politics, and who seem to be convinced that men are being discriminated against, strange as it may seem. Anti-women sentiments run rampant in this group. I find it quite worrying that these people seem to have a wide reach on YouTube to suck in folks who don’t know any better.

Now I know many Buddhist groups are still men-first, and have a ways to go in terms of gender equality, but at least they are not moving in the wrong direction! This whole process of using the internet to radicalise especially young people seems to me to be something to beware of.

Trump's "Save America" act would be a first step to ending women's vote. The act requires documentary proof of citizenship, and if one's married name doesn't agree with the name on their birth certificate, they don't have that. Presumably women could get around this by providing documentation of the name change, but this would be very difficult for some women. Not everybody has a copy of their birth and marriage certificates, and it can be quite difficult for some people to obtain them.

Their is a faction of MAGA that doesn't believe women should vote, especially married women, whose husbands should speak for them. They are quite open about this.

I came across this very interesting author, poet and activist named Wendell Berry on YouTube, who died on the 31st of August, 2026. He was in favour of agricultural communities and small farms, and against industrial agriculture, which he saw as an outflow of the World War 2 industrial and chemical business. He was a prolific writer, Berry wrote at least twenty-five books (or chapbooks) of poems, twenty-four volumes of essays, and fifteen novels and short story collections.

People called him a poet and a prophet, and although he called himself a Christian “of a kind” he had a broad appeal, in his appreciation for the Earth, nature and mankind’s place within it. Some of the things he wrote were rather zennish. From Wikipedia…

According to Berry, the good life includes sustainable agriculture, appropriate technologies, healthy rural communities, connection to place, the pleasures of good food, animal husbandry, good work, local economics, the miracle of life, consistent life ethic, fidelity, frugality, reverence, and the interconnectedness of life. The threats Berry finds to this good simple life include: industrial farming and the industrialization of life, ignorance, hubris, greed, violence against others and against the natural world, the eroding topsoil in the United States, global economics, and environmental destruction.

“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.”
― Wendell Berry

“Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed?
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”
― Wendell Berry

“Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.”
― Wendell Berry

“So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years...Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts...Practice resurrection.”
― Wendell Berry

@Jeroen said:
I came across this heart-warming documentary about the turnaround of Waterstones (and in the USA Barnes and Noble by the same man), really made my day to hear about the way bookstores are surviving on the high street.

An update on James Daunt’s efforts to apply the philosophy to the US giant bookstore Barnes and Noble. They are opening quite a few new bookstores, that’s a good sign.