Society is falling apart.
I have been saying it for many years already, but I think in the last few years, more are finally starting realise it. But, they don't really know why it is falling apart, they just know that things used to be different than now, and the conditions now are not supportive of healthy minds or bodies.
I was reading an article by @pauliinasoilu about an experience she had out late at night being accosted by a man, which is no an uncommon experience for women all over the world today. And in the article the question was asked;
What are men going to do about it?
They can't do much about it. Because they didn't create the problem to begin with, and individuals have very little power to make the changes necessary, because the structure of society breeds poor behaviour, by both men and women. The environment we have created is a spiral downward. A devolution of society, where people would rather talk to AI than other humans, because they hear what they want to hear. As I have said to my wife,
A man should never tell a woman what he thinks or how he feels, unless it is is the same as what she wants to hear.
And even then, the "what she wants to hear" is not aligned with how she feels after hearing it. I have listened to multiple stories of women complaining about their men not being manly enough, because they share their thoughts and feel too much. What women want is apparently a man that does everything they want, in the way they want it, and nothing else. A guy does something that the women doesn't like, no matter how slight, and she "gets the ick" and she can never see him the same again.
What kind of behaviour is that?
So then the men of today, spend their time with AI too, watching porn, finding places on the internet filled with people like them who have also been left feeling emasculated by society, and then what happens?
This isn't women's fault either.
Women have been told they can do anything and that men should worship them as women, no matter how they behave. But tell me women, what does that worship look like? Because if it is all one sided, that is slavery, and if history hasn't taught anything, slavery always ends badly for everyone involved. So now, a man must worship, but isn't allowed to express interest, but is simultaneously told that it is his job to make a move. He is told that he has to help women, but only in a way that is okay for the woman, that doesn't belittle her or make her feel inferior, in an environment where everybody is both filled with personalised eccentricities that they expect to be catered for, and are hypersensitive to anything that makes them feel even slightly uncomfortable.
What's a guy to do?
What we have to realise and treat, isn't men, nor women, it is society as a whole. We have destroyed it by degrading the importance of humanity in the name of profits. We have destroyed relationships, and families, and children, because the attraction of a screen is better company than a conversation with another person. We have created a nutritional environment for our mind and body that has left us fat, lazy, and entitled - with the belief that being so is healthy. We have created a world where people expect to get what they want, when they want it, whatever it is.
We are creating tyrants.
If people want to be safe on the streets again, it is going to take people rebuilding community. Rebuilding social ethics where people look after each other. Rebuilding a society that is constantly trying to improve as a group, rather than maximise as an individual. And if people want to have a safer street, they are going to have to be part of that society, rather than locking themselves behind a screen that feeds them more content to further disconnect them, at scale.
Billions of people are disconnecting from humanity and humanness, and it has created a worse life for everyone. And the worse life gets, the more people descend into a world of digital entitlement, where they get what they want, when they want it; and the problem worsens. But then, these same people still have base human needs they want satisfied, but they don't have any of the skills necessary to satisfy them in a healthy manner, and it all gets worse again.
Society keeps spiralling down.
For decades I have been told that we are not on a slippery slope, yet here we are, hurtling ever faster into humanity's abyss. A return to increasing violence due to increasing gaps in society, whether they be in wealth, health or mental state. A world filled with suffering, evidenced by the immense number of people who keep fighting for their mental health diagnoses as a pass they can show as to why they can't be better than they are, why their behaviour should be accepted, and why everyone else should accept them no matter how poorly they act.
Accept people as they are?
Well, we have created a society that has emphasised and encouraged psychopathic traits in people's behaviour, which means we should accept and forgive all these bad behaviours, because, they can't do anything about it - that is the way they are. It is the same argument used as to why we should accept that 70% of most western populations are over weight, and 40% are obese. It isn't their fault, it is society's - we have to accept them, give them concessions, let them keep eating themselves into disease, because that is just the way they are. Support them to be more of themselves.
This is not a controversial article.
Though many might believe it to be, and believe that they are right, because after all - we live in a world where belief is truth. As long as we believe something, it is our truth. and our truth is all that matters, because we are entitled individuals who have to be accepted, no matter what we believe or how we behave. And we can do this, because there is no longer a community that holds people in line. No longer a community that people want to protect and uphold. No longer a community that people want to build.
We are all individuals, entitled to whatever we want.
And when we don't get what we want, it is someone else's fault. Whether that be the reason I am so fat, or why there is violence on the street, or how many immigrants are in the country, or tourists are visiting, or drug addicts there are, or rapes, murders, shootings.... All someone else's fault.
But the truth is, we are all products of our environment.
And OUR environment is FUCKED.
Accept it?
Taraz
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Thank you for taking the time to respond, but I want to speak directly to what you wrote because there are several assumptions in your essay that do not align with the lived reality of women, nor with what my piece actually said.
You frame the issue of sexual harassment as a symptom of society falling apart. You argue that individuals, especially men, have very little power to change it because the structure of society breeds poor behavior. You suggest that men are unclear about what women want, and imply that women demand contradictory things: that men be expressive yet not manly, or that women expect to be worshipped.
First, I want to be clear: no serious conversation about gender-based harassment anywhere in the world ever says women want to be worshipped. That is a caricature, not a lived truth. Women do not ask for worship. Women ask for basic safety, respect, consent, and accountability. That is not contradiction. It is reality.
Second, harassment and sexual violence are overwhelmingly perpetrated by individual choices. While social conditions can influence behavior, they do not remove agency or moral responsibility from people who make a choice to harass, threaten, or assault another human being. The idea that men cannot do much about it because society created the problem removes accountability and excuses behavior rather than challenging it. Men stepping up and intervening when another man behaves inappropriately does change the culture around them, because culture is shaped by action, not by abstraction.
You wrote that a man should never tell a woman what he thinks or feels unless it is the same as what she wants to hear. That mindset is not only unhelpful; it is harmful. Communication, empathy, and mutual respect are not about saying comfortable things but about being honest, respectful, and accountable. Women asking men to communicate and express emotions is not a rejection of masculinity. It is a request for emotional maturity and awareness, something many men themselves identify as valuable and necessary.
Your essay also suggests that women have been told they can do anything and that men should worship them. These are not common cultural messages communicated by women seeking equality or safety. They are distortions of feminist ideas that simply ask for equal respect, autonomy, and dignity.
Blaming women for cultural breakdown, or implying that women’s supposed demands have caused men to disengage, not only misses the real issue, it shifts focus from actual harm to a defensive narrative about male identity. Many studies show that sexual harassment is not about miscommunication but about power and control, and that reducing responsibility for perpetrators undermines prevention.
Finally, safety in public spaces is not earned. It is a right. Women adjusting their behavior to avoid harassment is not a sign of stubborn independence or irrational fear. It is a rational response to very real risk that exists because individuals choose to behave in harmful ways.
If we want a safer society, we do not start by telling victims to adjust their expectations. We start by holding individuals accountable when they do harm, and by creating environments where people look out for one another without needing permission or gratefulness to act ethically.
Thank you again for engaging with the topic. I hope we can continue talking about solutions that respect everyone’s agency and dignity.
I disagree with so much of what you've written here.
Not only do men have the power and agency to change the culture of harassment, but it is up to men to do so. We, as men, have to stop harassment when we see it and call out the micro-harassment behaviour of our mates, family and strangers when we witness it or hear about it. We have to change the culture.
People turn to screens, social media and AI because human connection is financially or logistically harder than its been, but people still want human connection over the alternatives and will absolutely respond to us calling out their terrible behaviour.
I don't believe that you believe your wife and/or daughter want to be worshipped by men. They want to be treated as partners and equals, nothing more, nothing less.
I don't at all believe that we've all become fat, lazy and entitled. I believe that is what billionaires want us to believe through the media they've purchased so that we continually blame each other for our problems instead of rightfully blaming them. I think you might be confusing people trying to work out their mental health limitations and manage those issues, with using them as excuses. The obesity epidemic isn't because people are lazy, it's because there isn't enough government enforcement of regulations (or not enough regulations) and companies will always sacrifice quality ingredients over profit.
I think the most concerning thing for me is, though, that you've been convinced by conversative media that there is no hope, that people are terrible, and it'll prevent you from helping someone out because you think there's no point... and that's just not at all true.
If you want me to assume responsibility for something, show me how I'm in charge of it.
If I encountered a situation where a man was threatening a woman on the street I'd reach down and defend her with every weapon on my hip.
With no power comes no responsibility.
And many people apparently don't understand what has led to the problem. The well-intentioned but poorly executed push for equality, has indeed led to a more equal outcome for men and women to the point women have to defend themselves, in the same way men have had to. We have degraded the social structure of complementary skills and roles, creating a slop of homogeinity, making us less capable, less caring, but more independent.
I think the expectation is that men should intervene regardless of their ability to do so. The assumption is that all men are equal in size, strength, skill and therefore should take matters into their own hands. I hear that carrying machetes is the new manly thing to do.
Gender wars has warped the perspectives of many people on important matters, especially human relationships. We have ceased to see ourselves as humans, a group of people who need to work together for their own good. We've rather polarised the society gender wise, thereby ignoring the things that matter about us as a species.
Imagine if they were more activists in the world today advocating better living conditions for people, or that the government make laws that are eco-friendly and prevents the destruction of the planet, or that our food should be made less artificial. Rather what we have are a bunch of clamoring, clueless gender activists. Gender activism isn't bad but we are not doing it right and it should never be more or a priority than our survival as a species.
Gender activism, while over a billion people are starving. Fighting for labels and words, is going to lead us to fighting for food. Perhaps it already is.
We fill our minds and bodies with poison, then wonder why we are ill.
Without passing a judgement or opinion on this specific situation, I do agree that most men would be better of not telling most women what they really think...
There are exceptions, but even then men have to be very careful to package the truth or what we think is truth before disclosing it to any woman...
I agree with you. Most men who open up, will find that women are not equipped to deal with it. It is natural, because they haven't had to deal with vulnerable men for 2 million years, so haven't evolved to, just like men haven't evolved to be vulnerable, so when they try, they are clumsy and unaware, and getting the feedback from clumsy and unaware women.
Seems like frustration would be the key word of the day for this one. It's always a moving target and just when you think you have it in your sights, it moves again.
Yeah, frustration is part of it.
It is true that a woman wants a man who will act according to the wishes of a woman and not against her wishes. But a man's desires are also very similar. The current situations are not only the fault of men. There are many things to blame here, starting from gestures, and it is not that men are completely blameless. However, I think the abuse that women are currently being subjected to is not at all desirable. We should move away from this kind of animalistic mentality.
The problem is, the more we move away from each other, the more animalistic we become.
Lol!!. You've captured the 'no-win' scenario today. Men feel paralyzed by shifting expectations, and women feel unsafe despite the 'empowerment'. It’s a tragic irony that in an age of global connection, we are less equipped to handle the complexities of each other. My opinions on this topic though are very controversial, so i'd just leave it here.
I'd like to hear.
To create better relationships, I think we should promote real communication instead of following social expectations that make many people feel confused and misunderstood.
I agree. Instead, people would rather ask ChatGPT so they hear what they want from an algorithm - and then complain about the communication of others.
This is sort of provocative article rarely seen from you, but It aims at many crucial points highlighting the true facts the society is reeling through. I am 100% agreeing to your points.....
Is it provocative? :D
I just see society failing more and more. It started as a trickle, now it is a flood.
Agree...I am keeping an eye to see how users on hive respond to this...
Not sure how many will want to comment :)
Thanks.