The dangerous rise of serious young men

Around 8 months ago I was a salesman in a leisure centre. And one day I was sat in the office, just down the corridor from the gym, with my two female colleagues Skye and Jess, both 21 at the time. 

A young man came in for a tour one day and Jess showed him round. Both Jess and Skye are attractive women, and this guy clearly took a liking to Jess. He was probably the same age, looked sharp, dressed well and spoke articulately. 

I was sat on my desk on the right of Jess’s and was on the phone as they came back in from their tour. 

After a few minutes, as Jess was going through the membership options with him, I finished my phone call and turned to my left to see this guy doing the Andrew Tate pose, one leg crossed over the other whilst intensely staring into Jess’s eyes, completely devoid of emotion. 

Long story short, 5 minutes later Jess walked him out of the leisure centre, asked if he had any more questions, he asked to take her out for a drink, she lied and said she had a boyfriend, came back and told us.

Since this happened, it’s lived in my mind rent free, because I couldn’t help but cringe whilst looking at this guy.

Not just because he was doing the Andrew Tate pose but because he clearly liked Jess but would’ve scored at least -2 on a charisma rating. He was too serious and everyone in the room could feel it.

Diagnosis:

There’s no doubt us young men are confused.

Pulled in a multiplicity of directions which vibrate between enjoying life and pursuing women to shunning it all and fully focusing on ourselves, it’s safe to say we feel we’re damned if we do damned if we don’t.

If we looksmax to pursue women we’re feminine, if we knuckle down to focus on ourselves we’re selfish. It seems we just can’t win. 

Through this lens, as a man, it would be easy and understandable to point the finger at society and blame an external force. After all, it’s society and the algorithms which are promoting these messages right?

Right. 

But although it’s understandable, it won’t get you much further than turning you into a whining man-child convinced an external force is out to get you.

Instead, you must turn your focus towards how complicit you are in the nature of your suffering. You must take radical responsibility if you want the peace of mind you’re searching for. 

Nowadays young men are told to be serious and to grip life by the throat. They’re told to maximise every area of their life and settle for nothing less than the highest value. They’re told to get, achieve and accrue all the material possessions which emulate success. 

And although I believe there’s a time and place for these messages and I’d never sit here and say a man shouldn’t strive to achieve excellence in his life, the difference between seriousness and sincerity is not how involved you are in the activities of your life but in how tightly you grip. 

The messages thrown at young men of monk mode and animating their masculinity resound with a life or death take on life. They promote the idea of putting maximal effort in and seeing life as a plaything you can bend to your will. That’s gripping. Gripping to an outcome, an expectation and an idea of yourself; something you should be rather than what you are.

All activities in life, whether you’re approaching a girl, working on your business, developing yourself, balancing on a beam or floating in a pool of water, require the right amount of effort, but not more. Otherwise you start to get in your own way. 

And many young men are getting in their own way by putting the wrong amount of effort in. 

They want attention from women but because all they’ve learned is how to grip onto reality, they don’t know how to let go when on a first date and be themselves. Channeling the authenticity which counter-intuitively attracts a woman. 

They’ve focused so much on themselves during monk mode that they’ve neglected the main reason why they entered monk mode in the first place; to be a better person for the people in their lives. But now they’ve isolated everyone, who’s around to enjoy their improvements?

Sincere not serious:

“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”

• Alan Watts

In one of his standout lectures, the British philosopher Alan Watts implored his audience to be sincere, not serious. 

Although he didn’t go into too much detail about what he meant by this, I’ll do my best to illustrate the point further. 

Allow me to borrow your imagination for a moment. 

Imagine you’re about to play a board game with 3 good friends but one of your friends has brought a plus one. 

And this guy has taken charge of the evening. He’s read the instructions out loud twice to make sure everyone understands the game, and is silent throughout the whole time playing so he can focus. He takes the game as seriously as possible and makes everyone feel uncomfortable with how competitive he is. 

Would you leave remarking “that was a good night” or would you likely not want to give out invitations with plus ones ever again?

The word serious has roots from the early 15th century. There are many links to this word such as from the Old French serios (grave/earnest), latin serius (weighty), Lithuanian sveriu (to weigh/lift) and old English swær "heavy”. So through an etymological lens, the idea that seriousness is taxing in the same way as lifting a heavy weight tires your muscles, stretches across cultures. 

The word sincere however has roots from the latin word sincerus meaning “pure, unmixed, unadulterated” which means something which is truthful and free from falsehood and deceit. 

Think of the people you love to be around or look up to. They likely have an air of sincerity whilst being unapologetically themselves and notoriously fun. 

Now imagine you’re about to dance with a woman. Think of the qualities that dance would take if you were to approach it with seriousness. Your body would likely feel tense, rigid and stiff and the woman would sense this, resulting in the enjoyment of the moment being zapped for both you and your dance partner. 

You’d be too caught up in your own head about what you look like and what others think of your dancing than to let go and express yourself fully. 

Tune in whilst letting go (let go stillness chapter):

So young men don’t need more reasons to hate themselves, more reasons to despair as they compare themselves to people much older than them or to put in more effort which will produce more tension which will result in a seriously meaningless life.

Young men need to learn how to let go; of who they think they should be, the effort they should be putting in, and the acts they should be taking. 

And then they can tune in to what they could be doing, who they could be and the acts they could take.

Because should implies a social obligation, could implies potential. 

And most importantly, they need to learn that they don’t need work, women or intimacy, but they may engage in these things anyway as a gift to the world, and a gift they enact with a cheeky grin on their face rather than a serious look of pent up tension.

Implementation suggestions:

To conclude, here are some actionable steps you can take to snap out of this seriousness and tune in to sincerity:

1.) First, I encourage you to tune into the experience of seriousness in your day-to-day life. What aspects feel tight, heavy, and constrained?

2.) Another approach is to consciously try to turn up the seriousness, to exaggerate it almost as if you were an actor performing seriousness in a comedy play. Go so far over the top and see if your perspective shifts a little. Can you find some levity even in the depths of seriousness?

3.) Memento mori - keep in mind every single day that we will all die. Treat every day as if you’ll die in the evening, and then you’ll see how many serious things become trivial right before your eyes

4.) Books to read:

• The wisdom of insecurity (Alan Watts)
• Blue truth (David Deida)
• Any fiction book!