In the course of a brilliant article on “The Greatest Change in the History of Media”—an article well worth reading and pondering for its own sake—Vin Crosbie made an interesting observation which applies far beyond the scope of his piece:
Most people’s ability to perceive change is inversely proportional to its scale. They hail superficial changes as transformative, dismiss moderate changes as inconsequential, and fail to perceive gargantuan changes.
The context for that comment is his analysis of the failure of media corporations to understand the actual change that has occurred in their business, but it’s a general truth which has ramifications across the whole landscape of society; for most people, the truly massive changes that happen are too big to be seen, at least until it’s too late to do much about them. Unfortunately, that inability tends to be reinforced by a general resistance to believing that such huge changes could actually be happening, and perhaps could actually happen at all; that’s why so often, those who do perceive them are ignored or dismissed like so many Cassandras.
In that vein, it will be interesting to watch the response to Hanna Rosin’s piece in the latest Atlantic titled “The End of Men”; Rosin has put her finger on a change that’s been a long time building, and is far from done. The opening abstract sums it up well:
Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way—and its vast cultural consequences
I suspect that the discussion of her article will largely be unhelpful, which if so will be highly unfortunate, because the change she’s identified will indeed have vast cultural consequences—and probably not ones she or anyone else can see coming. We can certainly see what’s likely to produce those consequences; besides the obvious conclusion that increasingly, women will on the whole be more successful economically and socially than men, the other key result of the reversal she identifies will probably be the accelerating collapse of the institution of marriage in our culture, an issue which Rosin also considers. The hard question is, what will the results of those two things be?
Our natural tendency in forecasting the future is to use what we might call the Quisenberry model, taken from the late Dan Quisenberry’s quip, “I have seen the future, and it is much like the present, only longer.” What we tend to forget is that societies are relational systems writ large (or perhaps we might say, metasystems), and that systems are elastic; stretch a system out of balance, and it will try to pull back towards equilibrium. Stress it in one direction, and you’ll end up dealing with recoil from another. Backlash is built right into the structure. As such, looking at Rosin’s thesis and her evidence, what we ought to be asking is, where will the snap be coming from, and what will it look like?
I have some thoughts on that—too much for one blog post, of course, since this is a very big topic; but I’m planning to take a few posts, anyway, to sketch them out as best I can. As such, look for more on this in the days ahead. In the meantime, if anyone else has any ideas they’d care to contribute, I’d be interested to hear them.
Perhaps the most frightening consequence of this is that males who feel they don't have legitimate access to economic opportunities are more likely to resort to violence. Witness the rates of violent crime, domestic violence, etc. in low income areas, most of which are perpetrated by young males. If marriage rates are also decreased as a result, this lack of healthy social attachments would compound this increase in violence and other antisocial behaviors.
FWIW, I think future historians will write that three major developments occurred during the 20th Century. The first two were immediately obvious to most educated people, but the third is only today beginning to be recognized in retrospect:
1) Humanity developed technologies to destroy itself.
2) Humanity developed theories that began mastering the smallest (quantum) and largest (relativity) attributes of the universe.
3) and humanity emancipated half its population.
Females were legally emancipated in almost all of the world's countries (some Arab countries lag). Although it may be a few generations before female emancipation becomes truly effectual, it's certainly as great a historical development as the other two listed above.
And in terms of civic society, it was perhaps the the greatest single development of the previous millennium.
Prof. Crosbie, I agree; though I have a sneaking suspicion they'll also identify one or two others.
Anonymous: that's part of where I'm going, because I agree that's one of the major factors in play. I don't think it's the only one, though.
Roberta: is it? Some, certainly; but not all. There will always be those in any group who will hitch their willpower to their getalong and overcome, whatever the obstacle; and there will be far more who have many abilities, but not that one, and who as a consequence will not flourish when they might otherwise. It's one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of "just work harder" as a solution to other people's problems.
The solution is work harder for the Gospel!
Again, if we cast the gospel in "work harder" terms, it has a way of distorting the whole message.