Wimpy Patriarchy
This article by Professor Molly Worthan at the University of North Carolina diseases the form of religion taught by Bishop Robert Barron. Worthan says that Barron operates Word on Fire, a ministry that uses social media to preach a tough version of Catholicism that appeals to men, especially young men.
This [tough view] is not the message that [Barron] got as a young Catholic. “To be frank about it, when I was in the seminary, it was more of a feminized approach,” he recalled. “We did a lot of sitting in a circle and talking about our feelings.”
Whatever is in his instagram and You-Tube videos, which I, of course, won’t watch, it seems to appeal to younger men, as his audience is over 60% male. Worthan says that among college grads under age 40, 69% of mall claim a religious affiliation compared with 62% of women.
Male resentment
Worthan offers this possible explanation.
Some pundits argue that as gender norms shifted and women started outnumbering men in universities and the white-collar workforce, men have grown resentful and nostalgic for patriarchy—so they seek it in traditional religion. J. D. Vance is the country’s most famous Catholic convert, and the story of his rightward shift might seem like a template for all Gen Z and Millennial men interested in Christianity.
This explanation says that men respond to the success of women by asserting their superiority as the men of the patriarchy. Historically men were dominant and women were subordinate. For many this cashed out as men have all the power and women are submissive. Historically, this system was enforced by the state and by religious authorities. Today it’s a part of all religions, and is a central aspect of all fundamentalist religions.
Seeking a solution to the apparent superiority of so many women in the Patriarchy is an example of what C.S. Peirce calls the method of authority, one of his four responses to doubt. From his 1877 essay The Fixation Of Belief,
Let the will of the state act, then, instead of that of the individual. Let an institution be created which shall have for its object to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young; having at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated, or expressed. Let all possible causes of a change of mind be removed from men’s apprehensions. Let them be kept ignorant, lest they should learn of some reason to think otherwise than they do. .,,
Males Adrift
Worthan offers her own explanation:
Many young men feel unmoored—lonely in a time of weakening social institutions, unsatisfied and overworked by an accelerating professional rat race, alienated by political tribalism. “Men my age, we don’t have the social organizations that our fathers or grandfathers did,” Torrin Daddario, a Barron fan who converted to Catholicism from a Protestant background, told me. “We’re adrift.” Over the past decade, both the left and the right have tried to fill the void with morality tales that treat unfettered individual freedom as sacred and split the world into victims and oppressors. Those stories are getting stale.
Worthan explains that these young men get much of their information from YouTube and other social media. She says they might check out Jordan Peterson, for example, leading to Christianity, and the algorithm leads them to Barron.
This is an example of Peirce’s third possible response to doubt, which we might today call the method of common sense.
Let the action of natural preferences be unimpeded, then, and under their influence let men, conversing together and regarding matters in different lights, gradually develop beliefs in harmony with natural causes. … [Systems of metaphysics] have been chiefly adopted because their fundamental propositions seemed “agreeable to reason.” This is an apt expression; it does not mean that which agrees with experience, but that which we find ourselves inclined to believe.
Listening to random people who don’t have better information that you do is a recipe for failure. Listening to people hawking the old solutions, including patriarchy in its many forms, has the same result. You don’t get answers that are useful in our society. You get contemporary versions of answers to questions aur ancestors asked centuries or millennia ago. We living people have different questions based on radically different societies from those of our ancestors.
Beyond Atheism vs. Religion
All this gets boiled down into a discussion of atheism vs. religion. In the US, this debate is between people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, the New Atheists on one side; and the Bishop Barrons and aggressive groups like Opus Dei and Christian Domionists. It almost always is understood as atheism vs. Christianity, ignoring the teachings of other religions. It deals with untestable beliefs like the existence of a Supreme Being or the proper form of worship, and never the moral teachings. This kind of simplistic dualism pervades all public discourse on almost any issue. I am very skeptical of all dualistic framings, especially dualisms originating in the distant past.
The feelings Worthan describes are common among large numbers of people at especially after the First World war. The result was the origination of secular theories of humanity that seem to me to transcend arguments about the existence of a Supreme Being and forms of worship.
One example is Existentialism. Those adrift young men listening to Barron might recognize themselves in the ennui expressed in Sartre’s play No Exit. The most famous line in the play is “hell is other people”. The three “other people”, condemned to hell for their sins, will torture each other through eternity. The play concludes with the words: “Well, well, let’s get on with it. …” But is that the answer to the problem they face? Wallowing?
Sartre doesn’t think so. Neither do the other existentialists. Look at The Plague by Albert Camus. The hero is the doctor. In the face of a deadly plague he does his best to tend to the sick and dying, advise the living how to protect themselves, and find a cure. The other characters display other responses to the plague, some modestly useful, others worthless. Camus tells us we have to act, to help, to fight the inevitable, to resist the meaninglessness of the universe by finding meaning in other people.
The odd thing, of course, is that traditionally the fundamental character of the masculine was action, while the feminine was characterized by passivity. Men find their place in society by accomplishment. Women find their place in the home and in child-rearing.
How ridiculous is it that men respond to women’s action in the world by becoming passive wimps? Or by asserting an invented superiority not arising from personal accomplishment?
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Image; Ruth Bader Ginsberg in her Columbia academic regalia, 1959
Patriarchy is the kind of problem that never will disappear, like racism, anti-semitism and homophobia. Here’s a smart and well-written essay on the subject: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-crisis-of-gender-relations/
Isn’t it all as simple as, if a man needs to believe in patriarchy to believe in his own sexual identity, it is an indication of his insecurity or sense of impotence? Or his need to be dominate over women which is the relic of the myth of male superiority.
And of course nothing is as attractive to a woman as a whiny man whose only claim to admiration is his right to dominate women because he is, well, a ‘man.’ So manly that is. So sexy.
Side note: now that Trump has been elected, Jordan Peterson has decided to leave Canada, and all those woke-university types he’s been fighting with in Toronto for the last however-many years. Where’s he moving to? Where else? Florida! So now he can peddle his brand of patriarchy and general crankiness from a warm-weather environment.
My condolences. Canada’s a better place without that fucking loser in it.
My opinion is it is because the vast majority of males don’t feel male enough unless they have an opinion. ;/
In this instance the question was about religion but did the surveyors try to determine if men were just more generally inclined to give an opinion on most other subject matters?
I can’t help but think Patriarchy appeals to a similar sense in certain men who would also be drawn to talk of white supremacy. When in reality, if men were superior, (or white men), then there wouldn’t need to be a need to keep the thumb on the scale. It would just “be”. Those pining for Patriarchy are hoping some other big strong man will help them, rather than just competing in daily life. Isn’t that in an of itself submitting to a patriarchy that you would be subservient to? Its all an ouroboros of losers.
Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins do question religious authority and beliefs, but to reduce their work to that one dimension is unfair. Richard bumped into this space because he’s a biologist and most religions have a lot of false things to say in that space. Sam comes at it from another angle, and is very supportive of non-christian spirituality. They’re basic premise is that whatever you believe it should be based on evidence not on faith. Seems like a good founding principle. But it’s hard – you have to have to really think about every step of your process. Most people’s world view match that old comic with two scienties at a balck board full of equations. In the middles it says “here a miracle happens”, and then continues to the desired solution. The caption is, “I have a question about this middle part”. You can get anywhere you want with directed reasoning – and people do, to patriarchy, to suicide bombings, beating and mistreating women and children, slavery. But Sam and Richard ask about “this middle part”, and then are held up as against all religion. If you define all religion as being based on faith (some call it “the great mystery”, “the ineffable”, whatever), sure. But it seems you’re doing a two step here, where you hold up a religion no one likes, show Sam and Richard bashing it, and then you roll out some non-faith belief system and say you’ve found a third way. Sam has said he has deep respect for the rational parts of Bhuddism, and neither would have any foundational issues with the Greeks (bhuddism, stoicism, epicurianism).
No need to be a hater on Sam and Richard for this reason – they have their own real problems, with racism and tans issues, etc., no reason to misreprestent where they’re right.
My comment about the boiling down into dualism is based on Worthan’s article. I haven’t read either and probably won’t. As you can see, my discussion is a way of showing the problem with the use of dualisms inherent in most US discourse.
Your point that this reduction is mostly false fits nicely with my thinking. I originally planned to discuss atheism more carefully, focusing on which parts of religion atheist reject. Do they reject the moral teachings of Christianity or Judaism or Jainism? I doubt it, and your comment suggests that Harris and Dawkins don’t.
The idea that atheism is the conceptual opposite of religion seems wrong to me. Both words embody a number of closely related concepts. For example, religion means belief in a supernatural, forms of worship, moral teachings, various dogmatic positions and doctrines, and faith. Atheism means not believing in a Supreme Being, but it means a lot more.
Dualisms like this aren’t a problem for some of us. We simply disaggregate them. But some people take their mere existence as personal attacks, leading to stupid divisions into opposing camps.
Side note. as I have mentioned, my vision isn’t great, and I really appreciate it when people break up their comments into shorter paragraphs.
Is the assertion that “God does not exist” the same as “No Gods exist?” Is the statement “No Gods CAN exist” equal to the two assertions?
The atheism/faith polarity is paradoxically a category error—fact/belief—and yet is also coherent in the class of human attitudes toward ‘greater things.’ (The Webb Telescope/Rumi!)
Religions traffic in efficacious stories which bind groups and differentiate descriptions (and more.) Religion and metaphysics disappear from the human record as one steps back in time, and also these disappear as one steps away from, or out of, the religious (or metaphysical) system. Ironically, homo sapiens is the species able to develop the patterns of metaphysics.
A pragmatist would suggest that if something exists, say a belief or a counter-factual belief, these, nevertheless, earn some kind of account. After all, this account might describe its usefulness; its contexts; its history; its ‘connectivities;’ (etc.) and even go to describe the interplay of various further descriptions. For example, atheism looks very different from outside its relations to religious faith.
“The division of the perceived universe into parts and wholes is convenient and may be necessary, but no necessity determines how it shall be done.” – Gregory Bateson
What is important is not essential, what is essential is not important. (Sufi aphorism)
thank you Mr. Walker for the provocation
From The Plague:
there’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is – common decency.”
“What do you mean by ‘common decency’?” Rambert’s tone was grave.
“I don’t know what it means for other people but in my case I know that it consists in doing my job.”
from https://www.theframelab.org/understanding-the-maga-tech-authoritarian-alliance/
Strict Father morality results in a so-called “moral hierarchy” that governs how the world should work. Here it is:
God above Man
Man above Nature
Men above Women
Whites above Nonwhites
The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak)
The Rich above the Poor
Employers above Employees
Adults above Children
Western culture above Other cultures
U.S. above Other countries
Christians above Non-Christians
Straights above LGBTQ people
Good point. I should have called the doctor the protagonist. He doesn’t see himself as a hero, just a guy doing his job faithfully in a stressful time.
Maybe he should give himself more credit. Look at the yellow-belly Democratic politicians rolling over for Trump and telling us to abandon all of our fellow citizens who are being attacked by the ratfuckers in the R party. Compare that with all the working people who exposed themselves to Covid so the rest of us could get groceries.
Sometimes just doing your job is heroic.
from The Plague:
“…there’s one thing I must tell you: there’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is – common decency.”
“What do you mean by ‘common decency’?” Rambert’s tone was grave.
“I don’t know what it means for other people but in my case I know that it consists in doing my job.”
from https://www.theframelab.org/understanding-the-maga-tech-authoritarian-alliance/?ref=lakoff-and-duran-framelab-newsletter
Strict Father morality results in a so-called “moral hierarchy” that governs how the world should work. Here it is:
God above Man
Man above Nature
Men above Women
Whites above Nonwhites
The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak)
The Rich above the Poor
Employers above Employees
Adults above Children
Western culture above Other cultures
U.S. above Other countries
Christians above Non-Christians
Straights above LGBTQ people
Thomas Jefferson saw the bible had useful lessons but did not like the supernatural woo and so created the Jefferson Bible. Atheists like Dawkins et al. (and myself) don’t get our morality dictated to us by an authoritarian supernatural being. Something is not made to be moral or right by God commanding it.
Men need to be needed.
Are men returning to a space where they were required to be needed and lead the household? Seems like it. Recently in The Atlantic, Nick Cave talked about his journey with religion, grief and how Jordan Peterson hit a chord with him that did not stick. While I know of Peterson, I have not gone down his path as I resolved my issues with the Bible and Christianity long ago, but one thing I do know is that the stories of the Bible resonate and people have a need to understand what is this life all about?
I was reared a Southern Baptist but I always reasoned that if the Bible is true then what it said should be expressed in society. It also presented a paradox, which is, would I get the answers before I became a believer or would I have to become a believer to get the “answers” from god when I ascended to heaven? I was never baptized.
I believe we won the galactic lottery and that My Creator is this Earth. I also believe that the Bible tells some really factual and good stories if one only opens the door, which is what draws the Jordan Peterson, David Brooks and David French crowd.
As an example, I was told that Gen 3 was a story about a forbidden fruit, specifically an apple, but as I digested that story, I could not rectify that idea with the chapter I read. As I read Gen 3, it became clear that Cain and Abel had two separate fathers and I held firm to that belief over the past 20 years. Now we know two things, oral history can be “accurate” for at least 80k years and that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens started cross breeding 50k years ago in an area now known as the Middle East. Adam and Eve were told not to have sex with an outgroup, but did anyway, kicking off a story of cross breeding and cross pollinating ideas. The rest of the Bible is a story of a nomadic people describing events impacting their lives and making a myth that god chose them to live in Israel. It’s an overall goofy premise, but some of the stories are good at explaining life if one can read it in the correct context.
PS JD Vance struggled with religion and he was an atheist at Harvard, but he quickly amended that decision when he recognized that belief will never get one elected.