Vanishing Virility: Understanding the Modern Testosterone Crisis
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- Опубліковано 14 тра 2023
- Why do 22-year-olds today have the testosterone levels of 67-year-old men from the year 2000? Could it be because high testosterone activities and behaviors are increasingly being criminalized? I dive into the theory that the modern world is contributing to the decline in testosterone levels by stigmatizing and punishing testosterone-loaded activities, leading to a downward spiral in overall testosterone levels.
Join me as look at the evolution of law enforcement, the rise of a culture that labels aggressive behaviors as "toxic," and how movies from the 70s and 80s highlight a higher testosterone society. Discover how this decline in testosterone affects men today and how our society has slowly evolved to prevent these once-commonplace behaviors from happening.
0:00:39 - Testosterone and Prison
0:02:04 - Testosterone in the 70's and 80's
0:06:16 - Toxic Masculinity and Testosterone
0:08:26 - Testosterone's Catch 22
(Sorry for some clicking in the audio, there were some issues with my set up that I didn't notice until after I was done recording. We'll get that sorted!)
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Stealing cars was always only a low-life thing, even in the 1970's.
The thesis that hi carb food and contaminants plastics and pollution factors are the primary cause of the testosterone collapse is a lot more persuasive to me than not being able to steal cars....for chrissakes ..
I would hypothesize that the decrease in testosterone decreases this behavior. The reason for the decrease I would attribute to a distribution of things. Sedentary lifestyle, plasticisers, low quality foods I think is what has changed the most. Masturbation lowers testosterone and has increased dramatically for a collection of reasons. It's really important to excercise and absolutely avoid processed and low quality foods. Great video and description though.
I would bet you my last dollar that changes in average food, excercise, and sun exposure make up the vast majority of the changes in Test. while these social factors are 100% happening, to say that "if you want testosterone you'll have to deal with major crime" is kind of silly.
Take that 22 year old and change his diet to all home-made food, cut down on weed and booze, and have him walk outside every day. His test will be back to normal in 2 months.
Get him in the gym building muscle and doing outdoor activities. He'll be caught up with the 2001 guy pretty quick.
Every 1970s guy had to walk more places, was in the sun more, ate less processed foods, and was more likely to be in a career that kept him active. They got in a few more fights, and only some of them were car thieves.
"When a chemical affects your hormones, it's called an endocrine disruptor. And it turns out that many of the compounds used to make plastic soft and flexible (like phthalates) or to make them harder and stronger (like Bisphenol A, or BPA) are consummate endocrine disruptors. Phthalates and BPA, for example, mimic estrogen in the bloodstream. If you're a man with a lot of phthalates in his system, you'll produce less testosterone and fewer sperm. If exposed to phthalates in utero, a male fetus's reproductive system itself will be altered: He will develop to be less male."
"What's more, there is evidence that the effect of these endocrine disruptors increases over generations, due to something called *epigenetic inheritance*. Normally, acquired traits-like, say, a sperm count lowered by obesity-aren't passed down from father to son. But some chemicals, including phthalates and BPA, can change the way genes are expressed without altering the underlying genetic code, and that change is inheritable. Your father passes along his low sperm count to you, and your sperm count goes even lower after you're exposed to endocrine disruptors. That's part of the reason there's been no leveling off even after 40 years of declining sperm counts-the baseline keeps dropping." - Sperm Count Zero, Article on GQ from 2018.
Excellent. The stealing cars hypothesis is absurd, and at best only a correlation...
@@zenden6564 East Asians have the lowest testosterone levels and that's one of the reasons why they commit the least amount of crimes. And this is regardless whether they live in the US or Japan, so the culture has no impact on T levels.
You're looking sharp as always but I prefer the messier hairdo and the beard a tad shorter.
I think it started with the agarian revolutions, complex societies need social cohesion and obedience.
Endocrine disruptors in various forms are the primary reason. Not enough time for men to evolve biologically to suite social norms / laws yet, happening artificially via chemicals found in millions of products.
This assumption that, in order to decrease crime like shoplifting you have to decrease testosterone levels is, I think, a truly disastrous take and one that is symptomatic of what is currently going wrong with society.
If you look at depictions of masculinity such as King Arthur, we can see that the positives (seeking adventure etc.) are highlighted and celebrated but the negatives are kept in check by an honour code. In fact, masculinity and testosterone are both expressed in different ways, by the physical aptitude of Arthur and Lancelot but also the sort of bookish thirst for knowledge of Merlin.
👋👋👋👋
Masculinity looked different then because every aspect of society was grounded in a genuine belief in god. In an individualist secular society of merchants, with no firm morality, crime and testosterone are linked (this has been proven conclusively).
The boldness that drove King Arthur to defy the Saxons is the same boldness that drives a criminal to shoot at police officers. It's the masculine urge to choose death over submission. The latter just looks 'uglier' because materialism has rendered everything 'ugly.'
My takeaway: We need more bar fights 🤓
Funny that you should hone in on the GTA example. A few months after the last time we saw each other in 2019, I faced the abyss that probably prompted my visit in the first place. My luck and safety nets ran out that winter and I was facing homelessness back in BK. I found a semi abandoned VW vanagon parked a few blocks from where I had lived the salad days of my previous life. I say semi abandoned because the windshield had a number of parking tickets. It was clear that the owner was not in town. Having owned a vanagon, I knew my way around the car and found an unlocked entry way somehow. I then but my mechanical knowhow and research abilities into work for the next couple of days. I even had a spare battery to jumpstart the dead one in the vehicle. I figured out how to splice the wires somewhat easily, moving on to figure out how to bypass the wheel steering locking mechanism that activates if you are driving without a key. That was the tricky part that nobody covers anywhere. But I figured it out, after one or two "oh shit moments" when my bypass stopped working and my steering locked itself while I was driving during the test trials. Takes a lot of courage to steal a vehicle; takes a lot of abandonment and having nothing left to lose. That vehicle was among the few things that I had truly loved in this life and I take my actions then as a cry for help; as a last statement to pinpoint the things I held dear; as a breaking point from the life I once had. Because once I got caught my life would never be the same. Much like the near death experience I had a decade before.
All that to agree that stealing a car does not necessarily mean that you are bad person. I mean you are. But karma is a real force. I no longer worry about vengeance of any sort. I worry for the sake of the taker as much the victim because I know what it's like to be on the side of the taker. And I know how shitty of an experience it's like for the person on the receiving end after witnessing a best friend overwhelmingly think for a few hours that his car was stolen a few years prior. I still feel the guilt. But besides the $300 locking mechanism that I damaged, I treated that car better than I had treated my own vanagon during the few weeks that I had it. This is my first time publicly sharing what happened in the winter of 2020. The person who eventually got his car back also received all of my worldly belonging measuring to what I estimate to be twice the value of the van. And there was no way I could legally fight it. The social stigma associated with my position was enough to say fuck it and start from scratch. Hell, I think Temple's police force agreed with my sentiment. By happistance that's where I was arrested. After what felt like half of the campus police force bear down on me the only things I ever admitted to the cops was that I was homeless and that was honestly enough for them to stop questioning me. I walked away from the incident by luck without any permanent record - it being my first offence. Sometime you gotta give it to the judicial system. And the public attorneys of Philadelphia. They know what's up.
I like this hypothesis, but I think the lack of adversity plays a bigger role. Our body always conserves energy by eliminating things we don't use. I think most social decay can be traced back to its lack of necessity.
This makes sense from a generational cycle perspective. What is inevitable in cycles of history is that the pendulum eventually swings back the other way. It will be a long time before a high testosterone society makes a big return. Probably 2060/70s.
why not to talk about it with Robert Sapolsky? (he is neuroendocrynology biologits and used to be involved in implementing new juristicial system adjustments. I love his anegdote (which he told in the recent interview with JDPeterson) about the change of the behaviour in one baboons troup that happened over one generationa after the most aggressive males killed each other and how it influenced the whole community and there was a visible change in the social system, i.e. females had their adrenaline level dropped because they were surrounded by calmer (beta) males and their following offspring was more resilient to stress. Fascinating! What about that it's also those incarcarated man have less babies and there is genetical outcome... Men who have less testosterone reproduce while the men with higher T levels are captivated so they can't spread their genetically higher level to their offspring? Did you hear the theory about men producing less testosterone because women are on a pill? I think comfortable life makes it also lower. But I know testosterone doent actually cause agression it only emphasize learned behavior! Sapolsky elaborates about it.
Just steal a car theory
If you take things too far, go too much against masculinity and masculine archetypes, it’s a disaster too. This is why we see so many examples of escapism, of drug use in men, of depression. It’s not because they’re “not talking about their feelings”, it’s because their masculinity is being repressed.
Now that crime rates are increasing is your hypothesis that there will be a corresponding bump in the testosterone levels too?
Make Grand Theft Auto Great Again 😂
Bruh
200 years ago people were shipped to other colonies as convicts for stealing bread to eat. This hypothesis is pretty flat. Discipline has been around a long time...
High T reduces hysteria in men.
If I, someone with a literal my little pony avatar who isn’t exactly the pinnacle of masculinity, am looking around at the world and getting seriously concerned that testosterone levels and masculinity are dropping then there is DEFINITELY something wrong here.
Also “toxic masculinity” is a HORRIBLE term, literally the worst of the worst and I genuinely look down on anyone who uses it as if it’s a helpful phrase.
Sounds good until you take supraphisilogial exogenous test and realize you don't feel more macho but the same than before.
I truly believe that the traditional role of a patriarch cracked the code a long time ago (technically WAS the code that is being attacked from all sides). K-selection strategy curbs the r-strategical blind spots that result in the careless behaviors endemic to cultures that valorize low time preference & low impulse control. e.g.- fatherless homes
This is so insanely ignorant.
why? cause it didn't unthinkingly parrot peer reviewed research?
So true; I’ve been prosecuted as a high testosterone value male, unfortunate.