In a classic work, What’s Wrong with the World, the Catholic English Essayist G.K. Chesterton reviewed then modern errors about men, women, and children and education. Like much of his writing, he was prescient, and much of what he said then remains true of our world today. At the same time, new developments make it worth using his categories to rethink some of the errors today about men, women, and children. In a previous essay, we’ve looked at the lie about children. In this issue, we continue with modern lies about men and women.
Happy Reading.
What’s Wrong with the World: The Lie about Men
In recent years, it has become again, smart and sophisticated to speak of masculinity as “toxic,” and harmful. Maleness itself became a problem, dangerous to women and to society. In various contexts, much of modern western society has come to see men as unnecessary enemies of women and masculinity itself as toxic. In response to this lie about men, many young men today have simply chosen to adopt another lie. But neither is the answer. Read more here.
What’s Wrong with the World: The Lie about Women
NYT columnist Ross Douthat recently shared a chart that shows the happiness by gender since 1972. Both men’s and women’s happiness has tended to decline since that point, but in the case of women, the decline is particularly striking. Men’s happiness leveled off and even increased through the year 2000 before undergoing a sudden decline. Women’s happiness, on the other hand, underwent a fairly straight decline that only seems to be continuing. Women, put simply, are not happy and report that they are only becoming less so. What should we make of this? Read about the answer here.