by SEAN KULLMAN

Last month, an 80-year-old man went through his routine as an ice cream vendor, pushing his cart full of frozen goodies through the streets of Oakland until a group stepped out of an SUV and robbed him of $120 at gunpoint.

The moment served as a harsh reality being played out in towns and cities across America, an irrefutable tension that pitted one man’s commitment to persevere against a group’s outward expression to destroy.

Freud wrote about these inward and outward expressions in Beyond the Pleasure Principal, where he essentially pits the death instinct against the life instinct. And by death instinct, Freud is discussing (to a large degree) the types of behaviors that result in destruction of the self and others as opposed to the life instinct and the behaviors that lead to the care of the self and others. The example above is a manifestation of these competing concepts, and the notion of the death instinct, as it applies to the individual and social organisms, is worth unpacking.

The last several years have been undeniably destructive, not simply in the form of outward expressions of violence toward others, but also through inward expressions of harm actualized through suicide, opioids, alcohol, and self-mutilation. These actions are not simply a matter of individual choices. On some level, these are permitted by the institutions meant to protect against them. Those responsible for promoting the life instinct and human flourishing are actively working against it by allowing social disorder that makes the death instinct a course of action instead of something repulsive.

After all, what possesses a group to rob an 80-year-old man who earns a living selling ice-cream? Why do flash mobs show up to rob stores? Why are the assaults of children in school bathrooms suddenly a more common occurrence? These actions are expressions of the destructive forces of the death instinct, as are the 50,000 suicides, over 100,000 overdose deaths, the 25,000 homicides, the nearly 830,000 victims of violent crime, and the hundreds-of-thousands of people who participate in violent crime every year.

Our culture appears to be willfully advancing a death instinct and doing so through a collective social nihilism.

• Think of the countless number of drug-addicted and mentally-ill allowed to roam the streets like some zombie apocalypse while laws work to keep them on the streets, make drugs more accessible, and lead to fatal outcomes. Los Angeles, for instance, experienced a 95% increase in the number of homeless deaths from 2018 to 2021. There were over 4,000 homeless deaths in 2020 and 2021 in Los Angeles. At least 82% of those deaths were male and the numbers may be underestimated. When it comes to tracking the data, Los Angeles County’s Public Health Department ensures “male includes transgender male and female includes transgender female.” In other words, biological males who identify as females are placed in the female category and vice versa.
• Think about the school violence that is on the rise and the academic performance that is on the decline. In many instances, children are receiving a slap on the wrist for actions that are not simple fights among students but serious incidences of assault. The focus on education is moving away from learning and toward social justice activities that are not improving academic performance. There is social disorder at all levels of our educational system, and it is spilling out into the streets.
• In order to think about the mental health crisis that leads to outcomes of despair, we must acknowledge the civil disorder that contributes to a social mania and only encourages assault, robbery, drug addiction, suicide, rape, fatherlessness, poor school outcomes, homelessness, teen pregnancy and the poverty that often follows, a disintegration of the nuclear family, and institutional practices that create tensions that pit the male against the female, the unprotected classes against protected classes, and blacks against whites.

Instead of creating the safeguards designed to protect against social chaos and ensure civil order for all, there are policy makers whose work actively destroys the life instinct. When the government has multiple offices on women’s health, 40 states with commissions on women and girls, and no such programs or attention from media, government, and education for boys and men, policy makers and others make it clear that some groups should think more about life and other groups are relegated to destruction of the self and others.

Percent of Deaths of Despair by State that are Male (2018-2022 Compiled)

Many problems facing today’s boys and men are a symptom of cultural indifference to them when it comes to the promotion and preservation of the life instinct. America is a social organism moving toward life or death and it seems that the absence of the masculine, the disintegration of the nuclear family, the promotion of the well-being of some at the expense of others, and sanctioned chaos are contributing to an even greater move toward the death instinct. It’s the reason the law must apply equally more than ever.

Encouraging Human Flourishing

I would like to address a few issues that must take hold if we hope to encourage human flourishing in the United States. These are not the only ones of course and need much unpacking, but they are essential for a healthy society to embrace the life instinct as a personal and communal good.

A. The Nuclear Family

The U.S. needs to work more actively to encourage and promote the nuclear family as the bedrock of society. This does not mean abandoning others. It simply means supporting the statistical realities that come with healthy nuclear families. This must be done in policy and law. The role of parents in their children’s lives is central to a child’s well-being and the health of a society. Any attempt by to divide the family, except in extreme circumstances, only increases the likelihood of a personal and communal death instinct.

“Research evidence indicates that, on average, children who have (a) two parents who are committed to one another, (b) a stable home life, (c) more economic resources, and (d) the advantage of being intended or welcomed by their parents are more likely to flourish. In general, we believe that evidence suggests that marriage is the best path to the favorable outcomes highlighted above. Marriage is of course not the only path that allows children to succeed; many children raised by single parents and cohabiting parents thrive in life. Even so, in the United States marriage continues to be the institution most likely to combine the four benefits outlined above for the sake of children” (Institute for Family Studies).

And in instances of divorce and separation, there must be a concentrated effort to ensure that both parents are equally involved in the child’s life by completely changing the family court system that often bleeds family of resources that would be better used for children, counseling, and building savings so children can have more educational and recreational opportunities. Family Court should not be a battleground for lawyers and families; it should be a place advocating for the best interest of the child, which is ensuring both parents stay involved in their children’s lives. The more we spend on family court the less we spend on children.

B. Equal Protections Under the Law

The U.S. must embrace equal protections at all levels of government and public practice. It’s unconscionable that there are agencies that discriminate based on race and sex in the United States. Having an Office of Women’s Health but not having an Office of Men’s Health is good for special interests and securing votes, but it’s not good for our nation’s sons. As Erin Pizzey says, “There is a lot of money in hating men, particularly in the United States.” We can argue whether or not these types of agencies should exist at all, but we cannot deny that creating special agencies designed to encourage the well-being of girls and women and not boys and men is a moral and ethical failing of such great proportions that it is not surprising that 79.4% of suicide deaths in 2022 were male, or that 72% of overdose deaths were male, or that boys are far less likely to attend and graduate from college.

Ensuring equal protections under the law is the single most important component of the law and it must apply across all branches of government at the state and federal level. Not doing so works against the life instinct. Governments should not determine who is protected and who is not protected. Government should protect equally.

C. K-12 Education of America’s Children

The educational apparatus as we know it must change, beginning with K-12 education. With a greater number of children coming from single parent homes than ever, an emphasis on essential skills in reading, writing, math, and science are essential if our nation’s sons are going to become healthy and productive members of the community. The share of births to unmarried women is “41%, about double the percentage from 40 years ago,” and schools are unprepared to handle this reality in the classroom as it pertains to helping children become proficient in essential skills. Schools need to redirect diversity, equity, and inclusion funding to well-paid math and reading specialists and teacher training programs that look at the developmental differences of boys and girls as well as programs that address the ways boys and girls learn differently. Outcomes must be measured, and students must meet goals. Programs in reading, math, and science need to extend into summer programs to help students continue their success to reach goals, particularly in communities with serious socio-economic challenges. These challenges cut across all racial groups, and these programs should extend to learners of all levels. It’s important to help the struggling learner as much as the learner being held back by unchallenging classrooms. There must be an increase in student rigor, but it must be done with the appropriate support so that children are reading at grade level by third grade, fourth grade, and so on or every subject becomes increasingly harder. Reading is a gateway to academic freedom, and it is this area where boys are repeatedly falling behind, but it is not the only area boys are falling behind. Early research by the Global Initiative for Boys and Men in California shows that fewer than 30% of 8th grade boys were proficient in math in 2022 and only 42% were proficient in reading. Only 39% of 3rd grade boys were proficient in reading in 2022.

The over-medicating of our nation’s sons is part of a larger social practice that boys are problematic and must be medicated in order to function. The percentage of school suspensions handed out to boys at all levels of the educational system are problematic, but none more so than the suspension rates one sees at the lower levels. In California, 89% of suspensions in K-3 are boys and one is likely to find similar patterns in states across the country. Essential boy energy is squashed early on by schools. There needs to be an alternative to suspensions and medication, and part of it rests with more hands-on education and better pedagogical practices.

D. Higher Education

1. Higher education is too expensive, and the disparities are very clear, as only 40-42% of college enrollment is male and there seems to be little interest in creating some form of gender parity. Nearly every campus has a women in leadership program or some form of women empowerment. Such programs are not found for men on college campuses, in great part, because of the social and educational apparatus that knowingly works against equal protections. In the last few years, successful lawsuits have managed to curtail programs that are in violation of Title IX, a civil rights law designed to protect all people and not some at the expense of others.

“For now, universities’ women’s studies programs are still safe. The DOE has “made it clear that they’re not going to touch pedagogy,” Perry says. He adds, “A male student could take a class or even major or minor in women’s studies, so it’s clear that they [DOE] are not accepting those as violations. Women’s leadership programs can also continue to operate as long as they include on their website that men are welcome to apply.” The universities, however, are not rushing to offer courses in men’s studies or men’s leadership programs. It might make sense to have both and encourage collaboration.

2. Increasing trade programs must go hand-in-hand with economic policies to ensure trade and other educational programs lead to meaningful and well-paying jobs. (This topic requires a much broader explanation, but it gets at an important issue in America. As manufacturing jobs that mainly employed males have decreased, there has been little done to get this type of worker back into the workforce. As manufacturing in America decreased, teaching and nursing professions increased. America is deeply in need of more male teachers, so encouraging men to pursue careers in education is important at a time when more homes have fewer male role models.) American is in need of a Men in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (MANTO) program to match the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) program, another example of government working to discriminate against males and violate their equal protections.

Supporting the Life Instinct

The life instinct and the death instinct are personal and social forces that are part of a larger cultural ethos. Our nation needs to place a much greater emphasis on the life instinct as much as possible, beginning with the family and encouraging its success in all forms of law. Men without purpose are relegated to social ills more so than any other group. When society allows chaos and disorder, when it protects some and abandons others, it furthers a social mania that begins with the mugging of an 80-year-old ice cream vendor, and very likely leads to something more permanent and tragic. But that first act is a product of something much deeper.

Building a culture of caring for the self and others is central to the male psyche and society, and the reason our laws and practices need to promote and encourage the life instinct at all cost.

view original article on substack here https://gibm.substack.com/p/the-life-instinct-and-why-we-need