Young Men are Becoming Video-Game Playing Goofballs

[suburban_junkscape]

http://www.boysadrift.com/

Last night on Coast to Coast AM, they had this psychologist on, Dr. Leonard Sax, talking about an epidemic of poor performance and underachieving among boys and young men in the industrialized world that has emerged in the last 10-15 years or so and gotten steadily worse. He sees in his practice over and over where there is an equally smart brother and sister, and the sister is going to med school while the brother is a drop-out. His #1 blame goes to the estrogen mimicking chemicals like bisphenol-A and other plastic and petrochemical estrogen mimicking crap. He also blames several social conditions but the primary blame is chemical.

These young men (if you can call 30 young) just sit at home and play video games and jack off to online porn while mommy takes care of them. The young girls have noone to marry so go childless. It's being highlighted in films such as Failure to Launch.

[JurisDoctorOfDoom]

I listened to the whole show last night, it was one of the best ones ever. Not anything new as I've been reading/studying this a lot over the years. well there was one thing new. I do my best to avoid plastics but I did not know that only 2 plastic bottles will leach enough estrogen mimickers to equate to one birth control pill. I knew they were bad news but didn't know it was that bad. I'm never touching another one ever.

[suburban_junkscape]

Yea, I've followed this xenoestrogen thing or endocrine disruptor or whatever you want to call it since I first heard about it a couple of years ago, maybe on LATOC. At first I thought it was some kind of fringe thing (just how I thought about Peak Oil at first) but now its starting to add up. I'm noticing alot of my male friends are becoming for lack of a better term goofballs or fuckups. I have another friend who last year lost 2/3 of his hearing due to an autoimmune disease that came out of nowhere at age 28. These kinds of diseases used to be primarily found amongst women. Men were protected by high androgen levels.

I ordered the guys book off his website and now I'm taking it seriously enough to actually start trying to limit my exposure. I realize it will be hard just like limiting my gasoline use knowing about Peak Oil has been.

[OldHorseman]

These young men (if you can call 30 young) just sit at home and play video games and jack off to online porn while mommy takes care of them. The young girls have noone to marry so go childless.

   Or gals marry (or shack-up with) the xBox-addicted goofballs, get a baby or two, then lose the rose-tinted glasses, realize what a loser they hooked-up with, and bitch about him on LiveJournal or MySpace after dumping him until they find the next "donor" to seed another future ward of the State...

[InevitableForce73]

Oh ****.

*Steps away from all the plastic water bottles and games*

No wonder I've lost my edge recently...  I used to be more dedicated than normal, but DAMN.  This is incredibly awkward.

Well, it's finally high-time to redouble my intellectual efforts and get back into high-gear...  Better cut down on my addictions while I'm at it.

[CMH]

Wow, he could be talking about my family with the underachieving boy and overachieving sister....  Mine are 11boy and 10 girl, and ds has already failed third grade, now they are both in 4th grade and ds is failing again, while dd is an A/B student.  He is so unmotivated that I can seriously see him living under a bridge when he's older 'cause he just doesn't care.  (And no, he won't be living home with mommy)

Any ideas on how to replace the use of plastic sandwich bags?  I have eliminated much plastic at home, but I have a love affair with plastic to pack the kids lunch in.  I know what I pack is much healthier than a school lunch, but nearly everything is in plastic.  Glass containers are not allowed in school, so I can't switch to them, even though I have at home.

[Chesire]

Wow, he could be talking about my family with the underachieving boy and overachieving sister....  Mine are 11boy and 10 girl, and ds has already failed third grade, now they are both in 4th grade and ds is failing again, while dd is an A/B student.  He is so unmotivated that I can seriously see him living under a bridge when he's older 'cause he just doesn't care.  (And no, he won't be living home with mommy)

Any ideas on how to replace the use of plastic sandwich bags?  I have eliminated much plastic at home, but I have a love affair with plastic to pack the kids lunch in.  I know what I pack is much healthier than a school lunch, but nearly everything is in plastic.  Glass containers are not allowed in school, so I can't switch to them, even though I have at home.

Stainless steel messkits and canteens ?

[SaraBeth]

Wow, he could be talking about my family with the underachieving boy and overachieving sister....  Mine are 11boy and 10 girl, and ds has already failed third grade, now they are both in 4th grade and ds is failing again, while dd is an A/B student.  He is so unmotivated that I can seriously see him living under a bridge when he's older 'cause he just doesn't care.  (And no, he won't be living home with mommy)

Any ideas on how to replace the use of plastic sandwich bags?  I have eliminated much plastic at home, but I have a love affair with plastic to pack the kids lunch in.  I know what I pack is much healthier than a school lunch, but nearly everything is in plastic.  Glass containers are not allowed in school, so I can't switch to them, even though I have at home.

How about foil - or even waxed paper?

[cleiserle]

Funny how things go full circle, mom and grandma always used tin foil and wax paper..
Anybody got more info on the plastic water bottle/estrogen thing? I never hear of that?!?!?

[Michelle]

I don't have sons, so I can't comment.

[mtlouie]

Actually, aluminum foil isn't good.  Aluminum has been linked to - oh, shoot, I forget the name...when you lose your memory....

And waxed paper is WAXED with petroleum.  The same thing from which plastic is made.

Cloth?  I found these nifty little cloth wraps at a local health food store.  They wrap around the sandwich and then close with a velcro strip.  Of course, they are lined with plastic.... but you could make your own pretty easily.  It's just a big squre of cloth, folded over the sandwich.

We might as well accept the fact that just about anything of modern invention is crap for our health in the long run.  My WOW (World of War Craft) addicted son-in-law and I were talking about this the other day.  There was one of those invention commercials on TV.  They said that in 1800-something the patent office said that everything that could be invented already had been.  That was over a million patents ago.  We agreed that just about everything that SHOULD have been invented had been by the 1800-something.

[JohnLudi]

I live in an apartment building that is predominantly peopled with college students from one of the local universities.  Now I've never been a breast-beating alpha-type and machismo has always just annoyed me (not really into the whole Darwinian pecking-order pissing contest that motivates the average hairless primate), but damn, these young "men" are eunuchs!  An amazing lack of anything that could pass for rugged individualism.  

And what's more...they seem to be proud of it on some level.  They seem to have the notion that being almost wholly dependent on the system around them is somehow cool and that they are plugged in to something superior to all that has come before.  Like listening to crappy mindless hip-hop and spending hours of their meaningless lives playing video games is somehow the apex of human evolution.

It would be nice to attribute at least SOME of this to artifical estrogen...though I think the culture we have "evolved" is part of this synergistic feedback loop of diminishing returns.

[Nicholas]

What detriment is it on these men if they don't succeed in our modern economy in light of peak oil anyway?

[mtlouie]

Nicholas- very good point.  I think they will be very maleable to someone in the near future.  I can't remember who said this, but someone said the best thing you could do for your post-PO survival would be to make friends with a bunch of young guys.

[JurisDoctorOfDoom]

Nicholas- very good point.  I think they will be very maleable to someone in the near future.  I can't remember who said this, but someone said the best thing you could do for your post-PO survival would be to make friends with a bunch of young guys.

I think that's a quote I came up with and it was "if you wanted to help your community, start a business and create some jobs for the young men there." I said it at some hippie dominated PO conference, I don't think too many had conceived of that as those types tend to subscribe to the "money is evil, I believe in the gift economy!" type thinking.