this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Sooooo… when are we gonna admit that men’s mental health is unfortunaly heavily tied to their career prospects?
No, not yet?
Okay I’ll keep waiting.
sigh
…
It's capitalism.
Men's well being wouldn't be tied to career prospects if it weren't for the rat race we are all brainwashed into since birth that is capitalism.
You have worth as a human beyond your capacity to produce profit.
Because a man’s prospects weren’t important in feudal, classical, and ancient societies?
No, they weren't. Class was much more important. There was no class climbing prospect. You either were born into a having family or you weren't. Even amongst peasants, men weren't suppose to "have a career" or a prospect. You inherited whatever your family had.
There was expectations of performance, of course. There was internal competition, but no peasant would ever realistically transform into nobility via merit or otherwise.
Those ignorant of history forget that our current worldviews and values weren't always universal. The notion of a linear career, of having prospects, to be successful, to grow from a low place and climb the social and financial rings, accumulating wealth enough to retire early then leave a lofty inheritance to children and grandchildren. All that is modern construction that is not present before the 19th century. Furthermore, the expectations that all the other poor people are lazy scumbags, but my poverty is merely a circumstantial setback is a very American exceptialism view.
"Career prospects" in this case means that men want to feel like they’re of use to society. The issue is only tied to capitalism in the sense that the current capitalist environment doesn’t offer many of them meaningful work. I’m not sure what alternative to capitalism you imagine would solve that problem - without also giving men those same career prospects they’re currently lacking. Taking care of and providing for the tribe is what we're hardcoded to get meaning from.
You don't need someone to create jobs for you, people just need to do useful stuff and it will get attention. As long as work is organized, it doesn't make sense someone would "create" a job for you. It's all about History. These neo-aristocrats have a hold on capital, so they decide what to do.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't care about work with this, just that no jobs are "created".
I've seen so many men just suck at doing adult stuff in my life and career. It's not a problem of men not having the opportunity to show value, it's more that they expect to have value without providing anything. So if you feel useless, it's more of a you problem that current media allows you to blame other people for.
Capitalism is causing some of these issues. The core issue is men expecting the world to hand them a sense of value.
Sometimes it helps to remember that a lot of people are actually hopelessly stupid. And this isn't like some elitist ivory tower commentary - there is a good percentage of the population which struggles with basic problem solving, knowledge synthesis, critical thought, etc.
"Advanced capitalism" is sometimes literally called a "knowledge economy" and this has really properly fucked people who could have previously earned a fine living doing mindless physical work. And again, this isn't like some normative statement - for most of human history this equation has been inverted, and intellectual opportunities were scarce. Honestly, part of the problem is probably very specifically that we have hit that inflection point, which is cultivating a new form of alienation for those who are on that lower cognitive tail, who both lack opportunities and are also made to feel inferior for it.