Are Young Men all Messed Up?

Eminent Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, Philip Zimbardo, claimed last year that boys are increasingly lost in bedrooms behind computer screens. He blames this on absent parents and schools that don’t do what they did when he was a lad. He says “Boys have never been self-reflective. They are focussed on doing and acting; girls on being and feeling”, and that schools tend to focus on the latter. He argues that their escape to immerse themselves in an online world, particularly of pornography, means that youngsters don’t have the skills to try their luck with girls, still less to form real romantic relationships. Aping young males in US films, they become ‘man-poodles’ or infantilised jerks; devoid of economic purpose, emotional intelligence, and temperamentally unable to commit or take responsibility.

Is this a crisis, or a caricature? Cobblers or a Wake-Up call? You decide if you come and listen to polymath Chris Bratcher taking you through the journey a young man makes in his formative years. “Llywelyn”, a typical young male, will also elucidate.

Chris Bratcher is a former Chair and Treasurer of CHES, and practiced Sunday session talks giver and WEA/U3A lecturer on a wide range of topics born of his academic philosophical discipline of Ethics and the Philosophy of Mind, and from his studies in Literature and Fine Arts.