Nostalgia is a funny thing. The mind has a strange way of zeroing in on certain aspects of history, exaggerating them, forgetting other aspects of history, and even completely making up things that didn’t happen.
Not just for periods of history we were alive for, like me thinking the 1990s were pretty much the golden age of humanity with the best culture, people, and definitely the best music. This applies to all of history, like many men today, born in 2002, who think the 1950s were the golden age of humanity because they saw some pictures or an episode of Leave it to Beaver. (The 90s were a LOT better than the 50s. Fight me bro.)
In our manly-man corner of the internet, many members of the internet manosphere often lament that if only our modern age were more like history, things would be a lot better for men. For them specifically, and for men as a whole.
We imagine a time when our dad would have been a “real man” (tm). A stoic manly dude who went to work every day and made lots of money while our mom and siblings respected him and treated him well, everyone liked him and wanted to be his friend, and society constantly told us how great he and all men are. Who would play catch with us on the weekends and take us aside and sit us down and impart wisdom to us.
And armed with this wisdom we think our fathers had, our lives would have been so much better! It would have changed everything! I don’t know what magical things my dad would have said to me exactly, but he’d have said them.
We’d have had this male example to emulate and we’d know all these things he told us, so we’d never have struggled with girls, struggled in school, struggled finding jobs or making lots of money, struggled figuring out who we are and what we want out of life and finding an identity for ourselves. Life wouldn’t have been nearly this hard or this terrible, if only dad, society, mom, the government, feminism, the economy, boomers, Jews, Indians, Trump, democrats, immigrants, or whatever the current boogieman is hadn’t failed us.
We imagine a time when growing up attending school didn’t involve sitting at a desk listening to a female teacher lecture us about boring things while having to hold still, stay quiet, and pay attention to avoid getting in trouble. When school had lots of outside time and physical outlets for boys and lots of male teachers who served as examples to boys and knew what boys were like so they would teach them in a correct male way that would make the boys succeed. Who would sit them down and impart wisdom to them.
That didn’t actually happen. Schools were never male-focused outdoor education centers with lots of recess to keep ADHD boys happy, until some massive female teacher takeover. But who cares if the actual past doesn’t quite line up with how we think it should have been!
We’d have had all these male examples to emulate, and we’d know all of this wisdom they told us. We’d never have struggled with girls, struggled in school, struggled with jobs or money or figuring ourselves out. Life wouldn’t be this hard today if only someone from our past had taught us whatever secret male wisdom nobody is teaching boys any more.
We imagine a time when our youth would have been an endless series of attending male spaces. We’d play with the boys during recess at school. And, as noted above, school would pretty much have been 90% recess time because boys didn’t have to sit still and pay attention back then.
Our parents would have enrolled us in a bunch of boy sports. We’d have grown up with a strong male friend group. Spent our high school days in the locker room doing athletic boy stuff and having boy locker room talk and learning even more male-focused wisdom. Maybe joined a cool fraternity in college and learned even more from those men.
As adults, we’d be constantly running off to hang with groups of men after work in male spaces discussing manly-man things. We’d have all of these examples of great men! We’d learn so much manly-man wisdom! We wouldn’t be struggling today if only there were and had been all of these male spaces where we could hang with men and learn whatever knowledge they’d have imparted to us to get our lives on track.
We imagine a time when the workplace was a bastion of male mentorship. You’d stroll into your first job, fresh-faced and clueless, and immediately get paired with a grizzled veteran — a salt-of-the-earth type who’d take you under his wing. He’d show you the ropes, not just about the job, but about life. “Son,” he’d say, pulling you aside during a smoke break (because everyone smoked back then, and it was manly), “let me tell you how to handle a difficult boss, negotiate a raise, and spot a gold-digger from a mile away.” And just like that, career sorted, finances on lock, no more fumbling through interviews or bad bosses or economic downturns or horrible women.
Forget that workplaces were (and are) full of cutthroat competition, backstabbing, bosses who never have and never will care about your personal growth unless it fills their wallet. No way. In our minds, back then every office, factory, and construction site was a secret society of wise elders doling out the wisdom that would garner us the keys to the kingdom. If only we’d had that, we wouldn’t be stuck in dead-end jobs, buried in debt, and struggling!
We romanticize the military and trades as these male crucibles where boys became men overnight. Drafted or apprenticed young, surrounded by tough guys barking orders and sharing war stories over MREs or toolboxes. They’d hammer young boys into men overflowing with discipline, resilience, and that elusive male wisdom about women, money, and meaning. No therapy needed, no self-help books—just a sergeant or foreman turning you into an unbreakable man. If only society hadn’t failed us, we’d be paragons of masculinity today, never struggling with motivation, mental health, or the ladies.
Nostalgia is fun. I’d love to zip back to the 80s and 90s and experience growing up again. But there was never some enchanted era where life was a cakewalk because a bunch of wise dudes set examples and taught other men the secret male wisdom we’ve all been denied. History wasn’t a conveyor belt of paternal figures, male-only playgrounds, and locker-room lore that magically solved everything for us and turned us into men.
Men have always had to grind it out, often alone, in messy, unfair worlds. Your great-grandpa, your grandpa, even your dad figured things out through trial and error, sheer stubbornness, a lot of bumbling, and a whole lot of feeling exactly the way you feel today, right now.
Maybe today, our problems aren’t wars (yet), economic depression (yet), and social upheavals (yet…I’m going to stop listing things that aren’t happening because it’s depressing me that I have to keep typing ‘yet’) — but our problems are still real problems. And they’re ours. They’re ours to own, ours to figure out. It’s our turn to be grandpa. To sack up and stop worrying about whatever magical information we think we weren’t given or whatever upbringing society should have given us to prepare us for this problem, and figure out whatever path forward makes sense for us today, in our world - the real world with our real problems unique to us.
Pining for a past that never existed is dodging the mirror. Blaming absent dads, feminized schools, vanishing male spaces, or whatever else lets us off the hook. There’s no grizzled grandpa from the past, or loud-mouthed internet guru with a million followers today, who has the answers for your problems or mine. Unfortunately, nobody can take our accountability for us.
And unfortunately, not all problems are solvable. Many are. But some aren’t. At least not today, right now, under our current circumstances. Maybe we have to figure out how to make some problems livable, or jury-rig half-solutions. And every day feels like a struggle, like we’re barely hanging on — maybe even failing. And every day, we wonder if we’re supposed to feel like this all the time.
Didn’t grandpa have it easier because of his male wisdom? …Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was mostly like us. A little harder over here and softer over there. But like us in most of the ways that matter.
And maybe there are no secrets. Life isn’t hard because life failed us. It’s hard because it’s life.
Good luck out there, Internet Men.
