being one of the boys

and so it is The Demise of the Guys is one of Philip Zimbardo’s latest crusades, another repainting of his early 1970′s masterpiece  at  Stanford known as the Prison Experiment which had to be halted when “ordinary” male behavior went off on a train wreck exposing how the average Joe , albeit educated, can be capable of genuine evil. Stunningly, Zimbardo throws out the figure of fifty porn clips per week watched by ados and an incredible number of hours gaming on the web. This is evidently the by-product of a digital economy. A look at the top 100 or thousand web-sites in the world are surprisingly filled with porn. Porn sells.

Manet. Dejeuner sur l'Herbe

Andrew Costello:Philip Zimbardo says in his video “The Demise of Guys?” that examines male gender roles that guys are thirty percent more likely to drop out of school, they have a five times greater chance of getting attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), guys make up two thirds of special ed students, and girls exceed boys at all academic levels. According to scientists from the American Academy of Neurology the reason guys have a thirty percent more likely chance of getting ADHD is because girls brains mature earlier than boys….

Arthur Rackham illustration for Edgar Allan Poe. 1935.

…According to Philip Zimbardo the causes for this decrease in male intelligence is excessive use of the internet, video games, and masturbation. The average boy watches fifty porn videos a week, and by the age of twenty-one he has played ten thousand hours playing video games. The main problem is the rapid growth of the porn industry. According to Dr. Alice Eagly women have better qualities suited for being bosses, these qualities include the desire build others up instead of focusing on personal gain. The main problem isn’t that girls are excelling and becoming more successful then guys but the decline in male intelligence and that is impacting male gender roles.Read More:http://www.thehistorysalon.com/tag/ted-com/

In effect, Zimbardo delivers an effective indictment against mass culture. A mass culture, enamored by the cheap thrill of consumerism that Chales Baudelaire first noticed, expanded on by Rimbaud and written extensively by Walter Benjamin. Militarism, racism and sexism has galloped along with technology and popular culture and has probably been reinforced by it in a loop which makes industries out of dissent and feminism which seek vainly to reform what is resistant to all medication. The explosion of apps is a symptom of this gaming phenomenon, but is also part of larger, complex electronic systems which structure and control our daily lives.


Zimbardo is smack on about the infantilism of mass culture but; it was the creative destruction of capitalism and its wealth producing powers that brought this upon us. How far back can we turn the clock? The good old days were not that idyllic either and community values, social solidarity etc are intimately linked with a less prosperous society. If 30% of boys drop out- this is not a new phenomenon- its the 70% we should concentrate on. With the technological unemployment that will attain crisis status in a short while, this bottom tier has limited prospects anyway. Even the old standby of war to mop up the bored loiterers will now increasingly be fought with drones and automated systems. …

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