Aug 2005 #2 - Young Blokes and Train Wrecks

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DATE : Thu, 11 Aug 2005 11:00:00 EST
Entered in Database : 2005-08-11 12:00:00
length : 5000000
Link to the Show / Show Notes

I flicked on the radio the other night and tuned into a fascinating radio program. The program was being hosted by a bloke who was talking with two other blokes about blokes. It seems the host and the two blokes with him were very concerned about young blokes. They were discussing the ways in which young blokes 'go off the rails' and how we need to help married blokes be better blokes so their young blokes can become good blokes when they grow up. It was all rather blokey and got me thinking.The way these blokes were talking about this issue seemed to indicate that there are two classes of blokes. There are the ones who "take seriously" their commitments to their job, their wife, their country, their kids, their footy team, their pub, their mates and their dog. Then there are the rest. These blokes were characterised as not demonstrating any commitment beyond their own personal interest. In other words, this discussion set up a binary in which one group fully excludes the other, a scenario in which blokes fall into one of two camps. The good blokes (the committed ones) in one camp and the lesser ones (not bad, just deficient) in the other.On the radio program what I was hearing was that the reason young blokes of today are 'going off the rails' is because they lack "a significant male presence" in their lives. Oh, these blokes rattled on, it doesn't have to be a live in dad, it could be a school teacher or sports coach or another adult bloke like an uncle or older cousin. What young blokes lacked, these old blokes said, were good bloke role models.The blokes on the radio the other night were, as far as I could tell, doing nothing more that perpetuating the myth that all individuals are created equal and that the source of all woe is individual failure. Nothing could be further from the truth. We exist in and are shaped by the society and the institutional structures around us. What was Donne's saying? "No [wo]man is an island, entire of itself."The main problem the blokey commentators had on the night I tuned in is that they were turning the discussion away from the basic concept of society and were, in fact, reflecting the atomised, isolated, privatised world being created around us and by us. Rather than trying to deal with the root causes of young men 'going off the rails' they were trying to find bandaid solutions to a growing train wreck.Furthermore, these old blokes were preaching the patriarchal sermon that single women can't raise responsible, well balanced little blokes by themselves. The problem with the presenter's blokey appeals for "better role models", "father training" and getting responsible blokes back into the home is that it ignores the fact that we have to create the social conditions under which blokes will want to "do the right thing" (what ever that is) in the first place. What is it we expect of blokes at present? To earn lots of money to pay ever higher prices for the basic needs of his family. The best blokes, these commentators would argue, should be married to a "good" woman and have children who "respect" him.At the centre of the argument for "better" role models, better fathers and better blokes is a patriarchal view of the family and the world. That is, blokes mustrule. OK! The young blokes must be shown that the only true path to fulfilment is to emulate those who conform to the protestant work ethic (so beautifully described by Weber). What Weber subtitled his thesis was "the spirit of capitalism". What he does so well is point out the contradictions between what is espoused as fulfilling work and the reality that most blokes find themselves in. He writes,"If you ask them what is the meaning of their restless activity, why they are never satisfied with what they have, thus appearing so senseless to any purely worldly view of life, they would perhaps give the answer, if they know any at all, "to provide for my children and grandchildren". But more often ... simply: that business with its continuous work has become a necessary part of their lives. That is in fact the only possible motivation, but it at the same time expresses what is, seen from the view-point of personal happiness, so irrational about this sort of life, where a man exists for the sake of his business, instead of the reverse."The endless debates about the so called lack of adequate bloke role models is a furphy that needs to be exposed for what it is. It is just another distracting cul-de-sac into which many pour their woes and come out with a view that men need to save the world from other men. The picture painted on the program I heard and the discourse running through much of the present 'adequate male rolemodel' argument is that young blokes without older blokes in their lives are somehow deprived of something akin to a magic bloke potion.This magic potion, the proponents argue, if given in enough measure, will somehow inoculate the young bloke against falling into a life of crime, deprivation and misery. The proponents of this model argue that we need to get more men into teaching and positions of authority. As if men didn't run the world already! No! The problem is not young blokes being deprived of adequate role models it's the fact that we, as a society, offer them false hopes wrapped up in lies and false images.On the one hand we tell them that to be good blokes you must be honest, trustworthy and always ready to forgive. Increasingly we see our 'leaders' lie, cheat and call down the wrath of god on their enemies. We castigate young blokes if they step out of line yet they see, repeatedly, older blokes doing exactly the same things and not only getting away with it but often being lauded as heroes. No wonder young blokes go off the rails! They see older blokes working increasing hours and never being around and the older blokes who are around are only legitimised if they are retired or lying dying of disease. An unemployed bloke, they are told, is a wastrel and malingerer.The radio program I tuned into was not something that viewed the individual as part of society. Society played no part in the discussion other than the forum in which young blokes would be judged as either fulfilling the bloke role or failing it. Their failure was seen as a failure of the individual to adequately measure up to some seemingly arbitrary set of conditions.The problem lies not with the young blokes "going off the trails" but with the social structures that are failing them. As Weber wrote in 1905, "The capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live. It forces the individual, in so far as he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of action."The problem of young blokes 'going off the rails' cannot be solved by applying bandaids. At the heart of the problem is a lack of vision by all the older blokes who run the show. They look backwards to failing systems and structures, many of which they have had a role in dismantling. They fail to look forward to what is possible. Unless we demand changes to the very foundations of our society and work to implement them, the train wreck of young blokes our commentators want to fix will, I'm afraid to say, continue to claim more victims. I want to end with another quote from Donne's meditation, "any [wo]man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in humankind". Perhaps the focus of the blokey host and his blokey guest commentators should have been on how to improve the social train tracks rather than just chasing runaway trains.

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