five quotes (4.4.25)

five things I read at the outset of the cruelest month*

Sorry this is going out a day late. I plead Busyness.

Women, and the media, put the blame on men for this state of affairs. It’s the proverbial “good man shortage.” Undoubtedly this is true to some extent. But the marriageability of women is never called into question. All women are assumed to be marriageable. In reality, men, especially the kinds of high quality men women say they want, also make judgments, and they may well not find a 38 year old single mother desirable. Many women today don’t themselves have the traits that would enable them to land the kind of man they want under the current conditions of scarcity.

—Aaron Renn, “Marriage in the Age of Polarization” (Newsletter)

I think Renn has a solid point here. A lot of times, you will hear people say—especially in the church— “There are so many great single women available. When will someone marry them?” While I understand where this comes from, I am also aware that our culture has a tendency to place all blame squarely on men. I think that a lot of those amazing single women are not as marriageable as outsiders blithely assume. Because of cultural conditions, men can afford to be choosier than women—there are fewer college-educated men compared to college-educated women. That reality of our dating/marriage landscape needs to be addressed.

‘Doomerism’ is a coping mechanism: The world, as you’ve maybe noticed, is beset by all manner of crises. Extremely bad things may be in store – as if they weren’t bad enough already. Yet if there’s one piece of advice I’d like to jam into people’s brains when it comes to navigating anxiety-inducing times, it’s never to trust anyone who confidently asserts that the end of the world is nigh. This month alone, via Substack, I’ve stumbled across essays arguing that climate disruption will inevitably destroy civilisation within decades; that artificial intelligence will eliminate all knowledge work by the end of this year; that there’ll be a civil war in Britain by 2030 at the latest; that a crash is coming that will dwarf the Great Depression – and more besides. It’s a shockingly easy way to gain an online following. You don’t even need to provide reasons to believe your apocalyptic pronouncements, because the whole point is to define yourself in contrast to those hopelessly naïve innocents who still need persuading.

—Oliver Burkeman, “Three ideas for turbulent times” (The Imperfectionist)

Amen. I think this needs to be said and remembered the next time you get bent out of shape about the Next Big Thing. It pays to be pessimistic. Literally. If you want to amass an online following, as Burkeman notes, go the doom-and-gloom route. But the reality is that this is the intellectual equivalent of a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or an evening bender. It is a form of escapism because if everything is doomed, you are absolved of responsibility.

Beyond the atomization separating fitness from normal life, there is also further atomization within fitness. Let’s take biking as an example. First, biking was something you did outside, often with friends. There was scenery, socialization, exploration, sunlight, and exercise. Then the exercise element was captured in stationary bikes, placed in a gym or a spin class, and most of the richness was removed. You still got the exercise, and some socialization from being in the gym or class, but there was no scenery, no exploration, no time in the outdoors. Then we got Peloton. No socialization. No scenery. No exploration. No sunlight. Exercise, sure, and Emma is cute, but that’s it. The richness of biking is gone.

—Nat Eliason, “De-Atomization is the Secret to Happiness” (Newsletter)

This is a great article. Atomization is Eliason’s word for the way everything is pulled apart into its constituent parts. His biking example above is great. There is something qualitatively and quantitatively different about biking on a stationary bike as compared to mountain bike riding. But we have taken exercise away from everything beneficial about working out outdoors and put it inside a warehouse gym. It is a bit like when people find out some nutrient is healthy and so they start selling it in concentrated pill form. Maybe, say, carrots are not only good because they contain beta-carotene but because of all the other good things they contain.

In short, Millennials came of age with an enormous existential burden on our shoulders. These factors (and more, please comment if you think of any others) each had a snowball effect, cumulating into something that has sapped the life out of my generation. . . In sum, the collective Millennial psyche is one filled with anxiety about the future, anger about the present, and confusion about what it means to be human.

—Sarah Coppin, “Dear Boomers, This is Why Millennials Don't Feel Motivated to Work Anymore” (Discovering the Kingdom)

Another good article, and a good reminder of why my generation is uniquely burnt out. Coppin’s reasons are work culture, economic regression (especially when compared to the Boomers’ world), the digital revolution, existential loneliness, and spiritual homelessness. The Boomers inhabited a more coherent world with a more coherent set of practices. Millennials, by comparison, have been adrift. It is hard to handle the impact of each of the five things Coppin enumerates. They add up and have a cumulative effect.

The Hugobooms, both 33, are co-founders of two companies: Evie, a glossy magazine and website that Mrs. Hugoboom has described as a “conservative Cosmo,” and 28, a menstrual cycle-based wellness app backed by the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. Through 28, they sell a supplement called “Toxic Breakup” for women to use after quitting hormonal birth control, and through Evie, they release limited-edition clothing — most recently, a corseted “raw milkmaid” sundress “inspired by the hardworking dairymaids of 18th-century Europe.”

—Katie J.M. Baker, “The Conservative Women’s Magazine With Big Ambitions, and Sex Tips for Wives” (New York Times)

I don’t know, man. Alasdair MacIntyre has a great line about conservatives not actually conserving anything except the previous generation’s liberalism. For some reason that came to me here. A conservative magazine that involves scantily-clad models just doesn’t strike me as. . . what’s the word. . . conservative.

*That’s a T.S. Eliot quote. Personally, I have no beef with April.