Wed. February 13

Where Have the Renaissance Men Gone?

by Mark Judge

In her essay “Where Have All the Good Men Gone?,” Kay Hymowitz posits that we now live in the age of “pre-adulthood men.” These are guys who aren’t adolescents but are not yet men. Hymowitz: “Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This ‘pre-adulthood’ has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it’s time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn’t bring out the best in men.” Hymowitz blames an economy that requires more years of schooling, thus preventing maturity, and condemns the usual suspects: video games, fart jokes, Animal House.

Two thoughts: 1. Fart jokes aren’t the problem. 2. Women are just as bad.

“The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad,” G. K. Chesterton once wrote. “The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.” I believe the problem with the “pre-adulthood” phenomenon is that young men are no longer raised to be renaissance men. In a world that is increasingly secular and illiterate, they are taught to find their niche, hit it hard, and not worry about anything else. Thus, you have Big Bang Theory nerds who cannot name a single contemporary jazz artist; sports junkies who don’t know who John Paul II was; Bible thumpers who don’t own a single Beatles record; politicians who have never read a novel. These days no one tries to take on anything different for the simple pleasure of trying to improve themselves. They don’t stretch themselves.

This is why it gets tiresome when conservative critics keep circling back to the same scapegoats: Adam Sandler, Hollywood, toilet humor. They act as if these things are bad in and of themselves, when the problem is that they are not balanced out with anything more noble. I mean, Chaucer made fart jokes in The Canterbury Tales. But there were some other ideas in there as well. Also–and this is crucial–there was once a time when men kept ribald humor to their circle of male peers. There was just certain stuff you didn’t talk about in front of women. With the sexual revolution, those zones of healthy segregation began to collapse.

These days the problem isn’t as much pre-adulthood males as it is uncultured people–including women. When I was in high school at Georgetown Prep, a Jesuit school that prided itself on producing men who could both lay down a block and conjugate Latin, we had a term for well-rounded women: “cool chicks.” Yeah, she’s a cool chick. A cool chick would go to a baseball game with you, maybe liked a cool band, and also had a favorite museum and novel. They were cool because they weren’t just one thing–the Lena Dunham hipster, the scholarship-obsessed athlete, the Ally Sheedy Breakfast Club basket case. Do cool chicks exist anymore? Is there a Dianne Keaton of this generation?

My high school reunion is this year. Georgetown Prep is an all boys school, and there will be drinking, sports, conversations about family and movies and books and politics. Oh, and maybe even a fart joke. But it won’t dominate the proceedings.

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a symposium in which a variety of writers and thinkers weigh in on the question: “Can men be men again?” See earlier takes by Emily Esfahani Smith, Ryan Duffy, Mark Tapson, R. J. Moeller, Ben Domenech, a second post by Emily Esfahani Smith, Abby Schachter, and Anthony Dent. All of the posts are compiled here.

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Mark Judge

19 thoughts on “Where Have the Renaissance Men Gone?”

seamuscaseyFebruary 13, 2013 at 2:16 pm

Reblogged this on But the Lighting of a Fire and commented:
I know a couple of cool chicks. Hard to find, just like interesting well-rounded (educated) males are rarer every day.

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JerminatorFebruary 13, 2013 at 7:12 pm

My first thought when reading this was that these men are a product of the “self esteem” generation.
Think about it, when a guy actually does start to broaden his horizons it’s usually an attempt to be thought of as “that guy”. “That guy who can rock a fedora”, “that guy who listens to all those different types of music”, “that guy who can bench press all that weight” etc. etc. etc. They don’t want to actually experience new things or enrich their lives, they are only interested in being seen as someone who enjoys those things, to be the enviable “that guy”.

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dmdutcherFebruary 14, 2013 at 1:49 am

I think “not being able to move out of your parent’s house due to crippling student loan debt and underemployment” is a bigger cause of this than “not listening to jazz or the Beatles.” Uncultured men managed to get married and raise families fine without needing to be renaissance men, because they were able to become adults through self-supporting work. When they can’t, they keep on being boys. Whether they listen to country or opera is irrelevant.

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1. Jeremy A (@CaffeinatedWit)February 14, 2013 at 9:25 am
  
  Wouldn’t having all that “free time” mean that there would be more Renaissance Men? I mean if they’re not working, and have access to your parents internet, they have the ability to pursue many interests.
  
  Being a competent, accomplished, adult is not what’s being discussed. Mark is talking about the type of culture that men engage when they do. I don’t think it’s tied to personal accomplishment. My brother in law is a successful manager in a large business with a loving wife and 6 kids. But it I will admit to getting a little pissed at seeing him come home and head straight for the Call Of Duty.
  
  Reply
  1. dmdutcherFebruary 14, 2013 at 2:26 pm
    
    But this isn’t a new thing. Years Before call of duty, your brother would probably have just been watching pro-wrestling, boxing, hockey, or game shows on television, or maybe he’d go out bowling. Before this, he might have read dime novels or pulps. Past generations were just as ignorant of contemporary jazz artists and the big acts of the past, too. The amount of free time doesn’t really change this.
    
    By citing Kay, I understood renaissance men and cool chicks being sort of a reaction to the idea of prolonged adolescence, because that’s the only thing different. If it’s not, why bother? Every single culture and generation has high, middle, and low culture, and renaissance men have always been rare.
    
    Reply
pikkuneitiFebruary 14, 2013 at 8:47 am

I find extremely interesting your article and at the same time very sad, now days people want to be no. 1 at what they think is their unique talent when let’s be honest, sadly it doesn’t happen that way, I think people have lost the thirst for knowledge and comprimise with themselves now when there’s so much to gain it from (ironic don’t you think?), the world has become much closer now days with internet and social media but at the same time we have never been more isolated than today.

Not to mention that the roles have been completely distorted, men want and behave like women, while women want and behave like men (I’m talking about the gender not the sexual preference here!). I’m a woman that believes in equal opportunities (professional speaking) as man but still likes to be treated as the lady I am and I behave like. I do believe that gentlemen are not dead yet, is just gets harder to find now days.

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1. mr. wavevectorFebruary 16, 2013 at 5:41 pm
  
  So you want all the advantages of equality, and all the special treatment afforded women too?
  
  That does not make you a lady. It makes you a manipulative and exploitative person.
  
  Reply
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WillBestFebruary 17, 2013 at 1:16 am

Being a renaissance man is harder because there is so much more than there was 50 years ago. You mention sports, there are at least 6 sports (8 if you count popular college versions) that are followed widely now compared to 1 in the 1950s. Cars just aren’t mechanical they are electrical. Fixing appliances now includes computers. Men are doing more in the house leaving less time to branch out. TV shows? don’t even get me started there were 3 networks back then Now we have 5 plus another dozen or so cable stations cranking out top quality productions. If you dabbled in this and that you wouldn’t even be competent to talk about it intelligently.

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Jane EnglishFebruary 19, 2013 at 11:47 am

“In a world that is increasingly secular and illiterate…”

Yes, because as the article on Wikipedia states:
“In 1993, the US Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook published that the United States had a 97.9% literacy rate; and 99.99% in 2008.”
Definitely becoming more and more illiterate.
Also, who cares if the world is becoming “increasingly secular”? If you want a “renaissance man”, then historically speaking, you want a man who is beginning to form a disdain for God and focusing on other things, considering that the Renaissance era was an era in which people began to focus on things other than the church, as shown by the art and music of the time.

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