To shrug.

That is the exchange from the novel Atlas Shrugged. A recent post by /u/Whisper made me realize that we can draw some very real parallels between that book and the state of malehood in the West. Forget about Ayn Rand's politics/philosophy and just look at the story.

In the book, the upper class of self-made millionaires who build companies that allow the infrastructure of America to grow -steel, rail, coal, copper- are all being progressively squeezed during the Great Depression by government policy. Since they are well off in one aspect -finance- everyone is looking to extract more from them. By this one dimension of their existences, they are labeled "privileged' and therefore not allowed any complaints. And since they are capable people, they take on progressively heavier burdens and progressively dwindling incentives to do what they do efficiently.

Eventually the incentives get so low and the burdens so high, that things start to break down. A genius engineer named John Galt, who never got rich because he saw how things were developing very early and instead went into exile, he begins convincing these prime movers of industry to go off the grid, one by one. And they do. And society begins to crumble slowly.

The prime movers all end up in a utopia, where the world works as they understand it, where privilege is not a dirty word so long as it is leveraged with responsibility. And leveraged it is, for these people crave responsibility. But they want to be rewarded instead of exploited for it.

Is this not similar to what's been happening with men? The progressive squeeze from society, the removal of incentives to marry and start a family, the disregard of any and all complaints if you don't belong to a minority group? And now with the "sexodus" we are seeing more leave the traditional roles they are assigned to. Men are shrugging the responsibility that no longer has the same rewards.

The book ends with the lights going out in New York City because no competent business owner is there to produce the coal to keep the electricity flowing. It's implied that society will ask the prime movers to come back, on their own terms, to help them out of the mess they've created. If this is our fate, expect it to take a generation. For now, shrug away.