Angst and Anger: The Zeitgeist and the White Male
by Robert M. Herzog
A lot of commentary led by distraught NY Times columnists and picked up by The Atlantic and other earnest publications has been elicited by the recent publication of Richard Reeves book, “Of Men and Boys: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, etc.” In it boys and men are seriously hurting, academically, socially, healthwise, economically — well, you name it. Worse, they lack ambition, and sink into despair.
How to understand this phenomenon? One avenue is through contemporary art, as one view of art is that it reflects the common sensibilities of its times. This year, as I viewed the many amazing, creative, technologically brilliant exhibitions and installations at the Venice Biennale, that every-other-year round-up of global contemporary art, it didn’t take long to discern a common theme, expressed by artist after artist from many corners of the world.
It was a theme that sought to identify and display the impacts of past practices on our present, often seeking prescriptions for a more equitable future while condemning past sinners and implicitly or explicitly seeking redress. Thus much of history, culture, and contemporary societies is viewed through the lenses of colonialism, of race, gender, sexual identity and, religion.
In none of these perspectives does the white male fare well.
As the dominant player in each of these scenarios, its sins are attributed to him. The exploitation of resources and desiccations of cultures that underpinned the major powers as they took colonies; the subjugation of women that seems to accompany most cultures, including, increasingly and horrifically, our own; the denial of equality, dignity, and rights to any “other” than the straight white folks; and the often lethal sins justified in the name of religion — many of these fall onto the backs of the white male, and from dominant current perspectives that’s the essential theme of history.
Needless to say, the rise of intransigent woke dicta run parallel to the many artists’ visions of the imbalance of past worlds, of the need to raise the consciousness of these inequities now, and the greater need to find recourse, to right the scales. And given how askew they have been for so long, one strain of response is to swing the pendulum over to the other side, to force acknowledgement and obtain recompense. Repetition can substitute for validity. Say something often enough, in varying venues, and it obtains credibility. And seeps into the psyche.
After a few days of the Biennale, we visited Athens, and saw a production of Iphigenia in the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the extraordinary open air amphitheater at the base of the Acropolis. As my mind went to the familiar tropes of my education, it veered, so that I couldn’t help but think, “Here is the birthplace of (oops white male-centric) civilization.”
It’s not hard to understand that as these sensibilities filter through the zeitgeist, boys and men, (who are always vulnerable to performance issues!) are going to start expressing the attributes of the assaulted, snarling as the figurative cultural newspaper is rolled up and readied to strike their snouts. The zeitgeist is still pushing the pendulum in the new empowering direction of retribution and reparations; today’s boy and man may not have participated in the sins of the past — — the central thesis of those who dismiss any responsibility or need for action regarding past inequities — but they’re not going to get much sympathy or support outside their cohort, nor do they have the mindset that has helped other cohorts form support groups to address their sense of oppression.
As Paul Simon’s The Boxer cries out, “In his anger and his shame, I am leaving, I am leaving.” But unlike his boxer, for contemporary boys and men, the fight doesn’t remain. Expressing a white male point of view in certain circles can lead to eviscerating dismissal. The net effect is that that perspective isn’t going to find a sympathetic reception in the worlds of art or psyche dominated by the needs to expose malfeasance and express the bases for redress.
In the face of the cultural perspective on boys and men, two seemingly contradictory responses have occurred. Guys feeling the pressures and lacking the old forms of support and reinforcement are shrinking in hope, aspiration, and achievements that stem from confidence. The weight of the world is discouraging. And then…they move to the anger and the rage, but with no clear agenda other than expressing grievance they latch on to a purported savior figure who gives license to expressing the venomous distresses of their souls, and lash out against the perceived affronts the zeitgeist is rolling in their direction. They never did nothin’, and so the notion of reparations, of giving any form of compensation or support to the victims of the past, is anathema to them, easy fuel to be lit into destructive new narratives that strip traditional boundaries including civility and respectful discourse. Hence their openness to the specious arguments that “others” are taking away their self-appointed birthrights: of work, of culture, of supremacy.
The concept that systemic lack of access for many women and people of color to resources, support, wealth, dignity, and opportunity for many decades — as embedded in systems that primarily supported white males — has had a negative impact on countless others is too abstract, and drowned by the perceived absurdities of woke culture. The tides affecting male stature have given rise to policies that limit their own income while increasing income inequality, foisted upon them by those venal enough to exploit their grievances, in a movement that no longer respects the norms and boundaries of democracy, discourse, and mutual dignity, fanned by self-righteous fury to try to regain their imagined primacy in the world.
There’s a hope that the pendulum will shift back; that’s been a genius element in the American system. There’s also the chance the divisiveness will grow, fanned by Trump and the Republican party into autocracy, the grotesque role models for boys and men feeling disenfranchised. While their sense of grievance is aided and abetted by the so-called progressives’ tone deaf denial of validity and categoric rejection of views other than their prevailing opinion on what’s right. Dogma they push regardless of the clear and present danger that they are laying the foundation for the establishment of a governing structure that will give rise to tyranny that further limits their ability to find redress.
Reeves talks about boys and men, but there are also adolescents, driven by urges that shed restraint, when thwarted desires and unjustified but powerful grievances push imperatives beyond the leavening boundaries of social contracts and common decency. Ending up with the school boy shooter, the January 6th wannabee rebel, the violent responses to festering inchoate grievance, seeking immediate gratification and self-centered pleasures.
Let them in charge and America will devolve from a mature democracy to a nation run by the equivalent of messed up teenagers.
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