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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Pop culture creates overgrown kids in adult bodies who won’t grow up

By David McElroy · November 13, 2017

It was late at night when I got the emailed threat about five years ago. A suicidal friend sent me a dramatic picture — an obvious cry for help — with a knife poised against her wrist. She lives hundreds of miles away, so there was little that I could do to help, but I wondered where her husband was.

After I sent a reply trying to talk her into ending the threat — at least for that night — she sent back a sarcastic reply to my attempt to help her deal with this existential crisis.

“It’s not your job,” she wrote. “It’s the man-child’s who’s off playing computer games.”

I knew this was a continuing issue in her marriage. Her husband — about 30 years old — spent pretty much all of his non-work time playing computer games. As a result, they had fallen into living parallel lives. Although he knew she was depressed and suicidal, he chose to live in a fantasy world with gaming buddies instead of in the real world he had chosen for himself.

We’re living in a world where adults are allowed to remain irresponsible children. What’s worse, they’re led to believe this is normal.

I have no idea how accurate this is, but I noticed over the weekend that a 2011 study from a British company called Divorce Online claims 15 percent of recent divorces result from men paying more attention to computer gaming than to their wives. The first thing I thought of when I read that was the formerly suicidal woman who I used to know.

It’s not just men, but the crisis seems especially acute to me among men. Maybe it’s just because I’m particularly conscious about men’s failings in this regard. Either way, I’m certain it’s a crisis — for millions of individuals and for society as a whole.

We’re encouraging adults to remain children. It’s no longer treated as something to be ashamed of. It’s excused and treated like “just a phase” that someone will grow out of.

We talk about “man caves” and accept the idea that a man should go out partying with his friends and leave his wife and children home. Or sit in a basement alone playing video games for hours on end. Or do a dozen other things that say, “I brought a check home from work and that’s where my responsibility ends.”

We glorify immaturity. The heroes of our movies are often lovable but irresponsible men who won’t grow up. The villains and the butts of jokes in the movies are the “square” people who take responsibility for their families and lives. What kind of message does that culture send to young men? It tells them that they don’t have to grow up. And if they’re among those who can make a nice living and get married, that’s the only nod toward maturity that these men ever have to make — so they remain 40-year-old children.

When a man does it, the marriage is inevitably rocky and it forces a woman to build a separate, parallel life. After awhile, she might even come to prefer this dysfunctional pattern, because she doesn’t have to put up with a man who she doesn’t especially like anymore — a man who doesn’t especially like her, either — so she just makes bitter jokes about him and then makes her life all about her “girlfriends.” (And sometimes boyfriends, too.)

Guess what children learn as they grow up watching these patterns? They’re not as blind as you hope they are. They learn that this is what a family looks like. They learn that mom and dad don’t really need to love each other. Mom and dad don’t even have to like each other. They don’t even have to deal with one another. So what pattern do you think these children are going to unconsciously emulate in their own future?

As individuals and as a society, we have to grow up.

That doesn’t mean we have to become boring people like the “squares” in movies. Movies need conflict and they need a character to start out in a terrible place and then magically grow into something mature and loving by the end. It doesn’t work that way in real life.

Adults have to leave childhood behind and start acting like mature adults. We have to treat each other better and in more loving ways, not like selfish and angry 9-year-olds on a playground. Responsible people have to learn to quit trolling each other and trying to hurt each other online from behind the anonymity of a keyboard.

Most of all, adults need to become clear about their values.

Mature people need to realize that marriage and family are a responsibility. If they choose to take on those responsibilities, they owe it to their spouses and children to fill their roles in emotionally responsible ways. And that requires knowing what matters.

If you’re a nihilist — or if you’ve accepted that functional way of thinking — nothing really matters. You can troll people online. You can hurt people for “fun.” You can ignore the needs of people who you claim to love if that feels good to you. You can disappear and leave your family alone for a drunken weekend with your buddies if you want. You can do all those things — because if you value nothing, your actions don’t matter. Just do what feels good.

But if you believe life has meaning — and if you believe you have a responsibility to those you love — that changes everything about your behavior.

You put someone else first.

You treat your spouse and your family with loving care.

You give them your time and attention.

You turn away from immaturity. You turn away from the pop culture version of adulthood.

Let’s grow up — and let’s raise our expectations of those who we allow to be part of our lives. This epidemic of “the man-child” needs to end.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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