Men can't stop thinking about the Roman Empire. It's because of the masculinity polycri... - 0 views
fortune.com/...masculinity-polycrisis-culture
rome empire men male interest fascination history crisis culture
shared by Javier E on 02 Oct 23
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The world is in turmoil, and the men alive today are reeling because most of them have only known the most peaceful and prosperous times in history.
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The Columbia University economic historian Adam Tooze has been making the case since around the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that a “polycrisis” is gripping the world economy, a dynamic in which disparate shocks compound upon each other to create something greater and more profound than any one of them. Or, to paraphrase popular 1990s novelist Tom Clancy, the sum of all fears.
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Stoics are making a comeback—and they have been for several years. From discussions among Silicon Valley elites to podcasts and newsletters, the school of thought that once flourished in ancient Greece and Rome has been seeing a revival in recent years. The pandemic supercharged this.
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men react poorly to loss of status. A 2005 study by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne found that men who experience downward mobility are four times more likely to suffer from depression—and although women are twice as likely to be downwardly mobile, they don’t experience the same drop in well-being.
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Today’s backlash against diversity and inclusion efforts can also be seen through this lens: a third leg of men’s status being chopped off.
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The Roman Empire did not invent the patriarchy—but it did codify it into law. Pater familias was a legal status that gave the patriarch authority over the family and its estate, two status-granting privileges that contemporary men took for granted but may never achieve
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The Roman legal concept of bonus pater familias, or diligens pater familias, became the benchmark for reasonable and diligent behavior when courts seek to establish negligence, from Spain to Canada.
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Status (and gender) no longer mattered. What matters is the behavior: Is it that of a proverbial good family father? This has become a stand-in for the standard of care required, underpinning how we may not all think of the Roman Empire all that often, but it’s all around us.
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In an age of crises, competence commands a premium—but what we’re getting instead is misogyny, anger, and poor mental health
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no wonder that men are vocally demanding to spend more time with their families—perhaps the most potent cure to these struggles.
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Today, men are craving answers, purpose, and family. If that’s unachievable, we can expect much worse than fantasies about bygone empires.