For years, I’ve yearned for The Economist’s 16-page supplements, which I could rip from the magazine and read on my flight to Ottawa and emerge an hour later awash in knowing lots about something I knew nothing of before, like nanotechnology, quantum mechanics and iambic pentameter.
I remember the first sentence of the report on Japan, published in November 2011: “If you’re a baby girl born this morning in Tokyo, the chances of you living to be 100 are one in two.”
In 2015, The Economist issued a special report on Men Adrift. It was subtitled: “Badly educated men in rich countries have not adapted well to trade, technology or feminism.” Little did I know then that I would be reading the first distant early warnings of a concern whose reporting has risen a thousandfold since: What to do about men and their juniors, boys. Especially white men, and pointedly undereducated white men whom it’s clear now that AI will consume like whales do krill.
Today, it’s hard to read a magazine, stream a Netflix series, see a newcast or talk show, scan a blog, hear a podcast, scroll an Instagram post or buy a book on how young men are not only in huge trouble, they’re creating existential peril, not just for us, but for all of Western civilization. Last month, Janice Stein spoke to a group of wealth managers and their clients and said, “Boys are the most urgent problem the world faces today.”
Read on…
