Charisma on Command, Manhood, Narcissism
Links and recommendations
You can catch my recent appearance on Charisma on Command speaking about simps, pick-mes, and the recent Sydney Sweeney controversy with Charlie Houpert:
NYC Event:
You are invited to attend my live event with author and professional boxer Ed Latimore in New York City. September 18 at 6pm.
Details and registration here.
Boston Globe:
Here’s my latest piece for The Boston Globe.
The book that showed me manhood has to be created
Excerpt:
There’s a scene in the 1999 cult classic film “Office Space” where the protagonist is asked what he’d do if he had a million dollars. After a few crude jokes, he pauses and says, “Nothing. I would relax. I would sit on my ass all day. I would do nothing.”
Most men, particularly young men, would far prefer this mode of living as opposed to, say, being a domineering tyrant or a responsible authority figure.
Mature masculinity is artificially induced through culture. Mature men do not naturally emerge like butterflies from boyish cocoons. Rather, they must be carefully encouraged, nurtured, counseled, and prodded into taking the actions necessary to achieve mature manhood.
Gilmore writes, “Manhood is a cultural construct based on group needs that overlays and counteracts a hesitant and resisting nature.” In other words, manhood exists to push against the default setting: self-indulgence and avoidance of responsibility.
Social conservatives often assume men naturally want to be good husbands and fathers. If that were true, ancient Rome wouldn’t have needed laws against bachelorhood. It took serious effort to get men to take on those roles. Progressives make a similar mistake, assuming men desire power and control. But most young men today aren’t power-hungry. They’re increasingly checked out.
This is why cultures around the world created rituals to shape boys into men. As the psychologist Roy Baumeister has written, “In many societies, any girl who grows up automatically becomes a woman. … Meanwhile, a boy does not automatically become a man, and instead is often required to prove himself, usually by passing stringent tests or producing more than he consumes.”
You can read the whole thing here.
The Only Reading App I Use:
I’ve been using Readwise since April of 2021.
If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter/X, you’ll know I regularly share screenshots like this from books or articles I’ve read:
These screenshots come from my Readwise app.
Readwise aggregates your reading highlights from various sources like Kindle, Apple Books, Substack, Twitter, and so on. It stores your highlights in one place, making it easier to stay on top of your reading.
Each morning, it emails me 8 random excerpts from different books I’ve read. Since 2021, that daily message has been a quiet ritual for me: fragments from books I half‑forgot are resurfaced, like my own past self giving me a tap on the shoulder.
Moreover, when I’m thinking about a particular topic, a quick search pulls up not just my notes but every highlighted Kindle passage I’ve ever saved on the topic.
Exclusive Offer for My Readers
Use this link → https://readwise.io/robkhenderson/ to try Readwise free for 60 days (double the length of the standard free trial).
I suspect, like me, you’ll wonder how you ever read without it.
Links and recommendations:
Compulsory Drug Treatment Works by Charles Fain Lehman
What Are You Optimizing For? by
In the real world, minimum-wage hikes cost people their jobs by Jeff Jacoby
Narcissism, Relationship Commitment, Attention to Alternatives, and Social Media by
Why So Many Seek Approval from People Who Don't Value Them by Iskra Fileva
Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
You can follow me on TikTok here
Three interesting findings:
1. Boys in fatherless homes are twice as likely to be depressed compared with boys in intact families. Girls in fatherless homes are ten times more likely to be depressed. (source).
2. Democrats wrongly believed that 38 percent of Republicans made more than $250,000 per year (the real number was 2.2%), and Republicans in the same study wrongly thought that 32% of Democrats were gay, lesbian or bisexual (the real number was 6.3%). (source).
3. Involvement in activism is associated with higher levels of psychopathy. Involvement in activism may provide opportunities for psychopaths to act sadistically (such as by publicly shaming political opponents) and also enjoy the violence they observe. (source).
The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.
If you have gained any value from this newsletter want to support my work, please buy a copy today. For yourself. For a friend or a loved one. If you can’t afford it, please support your local library.
Order your copy now:
Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)
> Mature masculinity is artificially induced through culture.
Agreed -- and "immature masculinity" can be equally inculcated. If a culture prizes status signaling over status, and it instructs people (boys, girls, men, and women alike) that "ducking" (avoiding accountability for mistakes, or even better ever avoiding making mistakes) is preferable to genuine risk taking, mistake making, and true learning from those mistakes, we shouldn't be overly surprised that "manhood" is a dying aspect.
Seeing that an increasing number of people seem to prefer passing off "thinking" to chatbots, presumably with the notion that harvesting other people's thoughts comes with less risk, I suspect that as much as mature masculinity requires culture, our current culture is simply aiming at the opposite altogether...
That first key finding is super interesting since it seems like one of the big issues that disproportionately affects girls rather than boys in fatherless homes, Even though overall boys do worse. And it’s by a lot too, I don’t think anything happens to fatherless boys at 10X the rate. That’s kinda crazy and really sad.
Thanks for mentioning that Rob, the effect of fatherlessness on girl’s doesn’t get talked about enough, their life outcomes are also derailed. They also get worse academic outcomes, worse romantic success and worse mental health just like their brothers who have no father, in the case of mental health, they do even worse than their brothers.
Girls need good fathers too, not just boys.