Episode #33： Interview With Dr. Baumeister Part 2
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
167.32831
Summary
In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Dr. Roy Baumeister, author of the book, "Is There Anything Good About Men?" about the importance of risk and reward for men, and the role of schools.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:20.600
Well, in this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Dr. Roy Baumeister.
00:00:25.780
He's the author of the book, Is There Anything Good About Men?
00:00:32.700
And you mentioned just a moment ago about the importance for reward for men, it seems.
00:00:39.180
Men will do these crazy, risky things to gain respect or admiration or recognition from larger society.
00:00:50.440
But it seems like our society, some people would say, that we don't value or we want to diminish risk
00:00:56.340
and we shouldn't glorify things like violence or going off and sailing across the world
00:01:02.840
or whatever these things that people do nowadays.
00:01:06.660
I mean, if you take away that reward for risk, I mean, are men going to be, I mean, is that kind of kills the motivation for men?
00:01:13.760
I don't think it's that society is glorifying risk, per se.
00:01:19.600
When there's a burning building, somebody has to go into it and try to save the people into it.
00:01:25.140
Somebody has to stand up and try to put out the fire.
00:01:30.600
When there are criminals, you have to engage in a shootout with them.
00:01:34.220
Well, there's some risk there, but somebody has to do it.
00:01:37.220
When it's a matter of driving trucks all night or climbing up into high and dangerous places to fix things that are damaged,
00:01:52.180
It's not going to be possible to eliminate fatal risk from our society.
00:01:57.760
And so, in general, society sees that those jobs should be done by men.
00:02:05.400
To some extent, we open them up for women, but women aren't as interested in those jobs either,
00:02:14.260
Women work other sorts of jobs that are safer and contain less physical risk.
00:02:22.920
But I didn't mean to suggest that society is encouraging people to do crazy things as stunts.
00:02:30.840
But there are simply some jobs that inevitably come with some degree of danger with them.
00:02:37.440
I remember one part, and I think this is what I was trying to get to, and I think I just misspoke.
00:02:41.740
We talked about the motivation for boys in schools.
00:02:44.480
We started seeing this decline when the whole self-esteem movement started picking up.
00:02:56.200
They give rewards to anybody, no matter, even if everyone didn't do very well.
00:03:00.420
And I think you might have suggested somewhere in your book that, you know, for boys or for men,
00:03:06.200
that if no one can fail, then there's no risk involved or, you know, everyone's treated the same,
00:03:10.980
then there's really no point because, you know, you can't earn that glory, I guess, is, I think, what you mentioned.
00:03:21.960
I think the self-esteem movement is something that's probably better for girls than for boys.
00:03:28.980
A little more encouragement and reassurance maybe goes down well with the girls.
00:03:35.800
And great inflation and things like that, everybody getting an A.
00:03:39.320
Well, if you get an A with everybody else getting an A, in a sense, perhaps that's more okay with the girl than the boy.
00:03:47.060
There's still some striving for greatness, some desire more to be the one.
00:03:56.020
Again, you know, we're descended from twice as many women as men,
00:04:00.900
the ancestors of today's human race, twice as many women as men there,
00:04:06.040
which meant that in order to pass along your genes,
00:04:09.940
we're descended from the people who successfully passed on their genes,
00:04:12.680
the man, much more than the woman, had to stand out, had to fight his way to the top,
00:04:19.320
So competing against other men to be one of the few elite and winners,
00:04:24.340
that's more deeply rooted in the male than in the female psyche.
00:04:28.820
Our schools, we know the boys are not doing as well as girls these days.
00:04:33.780
There's much worrying about what that means and what the prognosis is.
00:04:39.520
We have changed, certainly, our schools in many ways with the best of intentions.
00:04:44.620
I think there was a time we felt that the schools were failing girls
00:04:48.700
and they needed to do more to take care of girls.
00:04:51.740
But there are very strong outspoken voices all over looking out for the interests of girls.
00:04:56.540
There's pretty much nobody looking out for the interests of boys.
00:04:59.100
And so when a school has a decision to make, we decided some time ago
00:05:04.160
that we're going to treat boys and girls the same,
00:05:06.340
and then we have to decide, well, should we do what's best for the girls or what's best for the boys?
00:05:10.480
Well, to do what's best for the boys would be seen as sexist,
00:05:13.060
and would provoke an outcry to do what's best for the girls seems more appropriate and fine.
00:05:18.040
And so over and over again, the schools and administrators,
00:05:20.780
who, again, are mostly women, make that decision, and everyone goes along with it.
00:05:26.760
And the upshot is we've gotten to where we are essentially raising boys like girls,
00:05:31.980
which is probably not the best thing for bringing out the best in the boys.
00:05:38.580
Here I go beyond what's the solid factual knowledge,
00:05:45.080
But with things like the self-esteem movement being very better for girls,
00:05:49.860
well, we know girls have very slightly lower self-esteem than boys,
00:05:54.300
and especially, say, in the teen years, the boys tend to be more egotistical and narcissistic.
00:05:59.580
Probably nature's way of preparing the young male for the rather challenging competition
00:06:03.860
that it's had to take in competing and trying to get to be the top,
00:06:15.960
And so confidence to fight and compete was probably more necessary.
00:06:22.600
but it probably had a valid biological function.
00:06:25.900
But now to bolster that and tell young men and reassure their self-esteem,
00:06:32.220
that sort of ends up cultivating this narcissism that much more,
00:06:35.680
which I think is a destructive trait and not conducive.
00:06:39.620
The cultures that have done best at producing successful crops of men
00:06:44.300
have tended to instill humility instead in the young men
00:06:47.200
to try to puncture their egotistical balloon and bring them down to earth
00:06:51.140
and say, you've got to learn your place and earn your position
00:06:54.200
and achieve and accomplish and fight your way to the top and prove yourself
00:06:58.960
rather than have respect just given to you for being there.
00:07:02.600
And so when we instead just give them respect and everything,
00:07:06.600
then I think that doesn't do what's best for the young male psyche.
00:07:11.280
We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:07:16.200
So you talk about marriage and sex in your book,
00:07:18.720
and one of the issues discussed is why so many younger men today
00:07:33.440
The eternal adolescence argument is perhaps a reproach or a ploy
00:07:38.920
or a way to manipulate men, even though there may be something to it.
00:07:43.440
But one thing, if you take the long view, I should add,
00:07:46.020
the age of first marriage has gone up and down throughout history.
00:07:48.740
We tend to compare it to the 1950s when it was exceptionally low.
00:07:51.860
It was higher, I think, in the early parts of the 20th century,
00:07:56.340
and it has gone up and down with various factors.
00:08:01.140
It is going up now and perhaps higher than it's ever been.
00:08:05.700
So we want to look probably there are a couple things going on.
00:08:09.060
For one thing, one of the main reasons that pressured people into marrying early
00:08:18.200
yet that's no longer a constraint that single people can have plenty of sex.
00:08:23.660
And so one of the main reasons to rush and get married early has been taken away.
00:08:29.820
The eternal adolescence, well, there may be, as I said,
00:08:33.560
as we put less pressure on young people to mature and grow up and take on adult roles,
00:08:39.340
and we allow them to stay in independent roles of being a student, things like that.
00:08:45.200
Well, then, why not stay in adolescence a little bit longer?
00:08:51.240
especially when all your needs are taken care of and you have money and a nice place to live
00:08:55.980
and people to sleep with and people to have fun with.
00:08:59.360
And so rushing into a more structured marriage kind of thing
00:09:05.120
is maybe not as appealing as it might have been another time.
00:09:11.580
I should add, too, though, that the idea that men are resisting this,
00:09:16.880
well, you can look at that, I mean, that's how the women might see it,
00:09:24.640
I think there's a basic rationality in both the women wanting to get married earlier
00:09:32.120
For one thing, assuming you want to get married, you want to get the best possible partner,
00:09:46.980
the biggest factor in a woman's appeal is her physical looks and beauty and attractiveness.
00:09:52.940
The biggest thing in a man's appeal is his ability to make money and be a provider.
00:10:01.640
The woman's looks tend to peak earlier than the man's earning power,
00:10:12.280
well, very few women look as good at 40 as they did at 20,
00:10:16.180
and so their ability to attract the most desirable partner
00:10:20.000
has probably gone down steadily over that period of time,
00:10:23.460
whereas a man's ability in terms of his earning power
00:10:30.440
So his mate appeal, his desire to attract women,
00:10:37.380
Hence, year by year, each year the woman thinks,
00:10:42.040
I should try to get married because next year my prospects will be a little worse than they are this year,
00:10:48.100
whereas each year the man can think my prospects will be a little better next year than this year,
00:10:58.140
and there are a few other complicating factors that men and women tend to marry
00:11:02.080
with the man being a couple years older than the woman,
00:11:10.760
So again, though, that brings the same pressure that the woman wants to marry earlier
00:11:20.720
If the man waits longer, there are more and more younger women available.
00:11:28.400
whereas it's in the woman's interest not to wait.
00:11:32.920
that one of the reasons people get married is to have children,
00:11:36.740
although people have children without being married,
00:11:45.380
And there, too, the woman's time for having children is limited,
00:11:48.760
so she is better off marrying earlier and having her children earlier,
00:11:56.460
A woman who's 40 usually is done having children.
00:12:00.140
If she's going to reproduce after that, she might have one or two,
00:12:06.740
A man at 40 still can have a dozen children in his life,
00:12:13.140
So there's no rush for him to get that over and done with in the same way.
00:12:18.960
And then there are even broader questions about who gets what out of marriage,
00:12:26.560
Well, one way to look at marriage is it society's way of transferring money from men to women.
00:12:33.640
Certainly that tends to be what happens in divorce.
00:12:35.880
A lot of the money is taken from the man and transferred to the woman.
00:12:43.440
And I could see men saying there, well, what do I get out of it?
00:12:46.720
Now, both men and women are happier, a little happier when they are married than when they are not.
00:12:54.880
But if you just wanted to take a cold, calculating approach to it,
00:12:58.740
it makes perfect sense for men to postpone marriage and even question whether they should do it at all.
00:13:05.880
You lay out some pretty controversial things that I'm sure some women in academia wouldn't go over well with them.
00:13:13.980
Well, the book just came out, so I haven't heard that much response.
00:13:19.580
I did make sure to circulate the book to women as well as men in academia before I released it
00:13:27.460
because I wanted to have something that people felt would be fair to both sides and would be respectful of everybody.
00:13:33.880
because, you know, this is in no way, this is not a pro-man book or an anti-woman book or anything like that.
00:13:42.280
It is trying to argue that basically men and women are different in some ways,
00:13:48.780
more in what they want than in what they're capable of,
00:13:51.880
that men and women have mostly worked together.
00:13:53.880
They've not been enemies, that they're a partner,
00:13:56.660
and that maybe they should appreciate each other a little more.
00:14:01.480
And I think it's a very, you know, positive and friendly message.
00:14:05.120
So that's what I'm hoping people will get from it.
00:14:08.400
Now, there's certainly an entrenched dogma about gender differences built up with this mostly victim mentality
00:14:23.500
My wife jokes that I'm more of a feminist than she ever was.
00:14:30.240
Feminism in the 70s was open to everybody and meant openness to new ideas and challenging orthodox views and dogmas
00:14:37.800
and trying to make everyone have opportunities and equality.
00:14:45.580
But feminism has moved away from that, as many scholars have argued,
00:14:51.060
and has now become much more dogmatic and defending a particular view and promoting women at the expense of men.
00:15:00.060
And so those people are certainly not going to like a book that says, well, men and women are equal and get along.
00:15:07.160
I think, if anything, one of the most issues that feminism has really built on is seeing men and women as basically enemies,
00:15:17.820
that men and women are fundamentally at odds with each other and that there's a struggle or battle of the sexes.
00:15:23.700
And I said, well, I want to get past the battle of the sexes, that men and women have been on the same side,
00:15:27.960
cooperating more than others and complementing each other and helping each other.
00:15:31.880
History is mostly, it's not been about men against women.
00:15:35.800
History has mostly been about groups of men supported by their women competing against other groups of men.
00:15:42.160
And if you want to look at warfare or trade or science or exploration or whatever,
00:15:48.560
it was generally competitions among groups of men, all of whom were crucially aided and supported by their women.
00:15:58.460
And so I'm trying to have a kinder, gentler, more harmonious view of gender relations.
00:16:13.160
You know, it does bring up, does challenge a lot of things you hear in the popular culture.
00:16:17.540
And even when you're at school and undergrad, and I think a lot of men would enjoy reading it and just find it very fascinating.
00:16:24.700
Well, Professor Bowmaster, I really appreciate your time.
00:16:32.000
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:16:38.080
For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness blog at artofmanliness.com.