A man whose brother is a Hollywood star has become an unlikely messiah for the manosphere, and British mental health experts are wringing their hands in despair. They call it a crisis. I call it a predictable symptom of a civilisation that has lost its nerve.
Consider the context. We live in an era of intellectual decadence, where the old verities of duty, honour, and stoic masculinity have been replaced by a therapeutic culture that pathologises every impulse. The manosphere, for all its crudeness, is a reaction to this: a clumsy, often repellent, but understandable rebellion against a society that tells men they are toxic for simply existing. And now, a celebrity sibling has stepped into this vacuum, offering a gospel of self-reliance that the chattering classes find so alarming.
But let us be serious. The real crisis is not that misguided young men are listening to a Hollywood apostate. The real crisis is that our institutions have abandoned them. Schools, churches, and families no longer provide a coherent model of manhood. Instead, we offer a dreary litany of guilt and therapy. No wonder they turn to the manosphere. It is the intellectual equivalent of the Fall of Rome: the barbarians are at the gate, but we have forgotten how to build walls.
What do the mental health experts propose? More therapy, more sensitivity training, more social engineering. They would be better advised to look to history. The Victorians understood the value of self-discipline and stoic endurance. They did not coddle boys into perpetual adolescence. They forged men capable of empire. We, by contrast, have produced a generation of soft-bellied hypochondriacs who need a celebrity guru to tell them how to be men.
Of course, the manosphere is not the answer. Its misogyny is repellent, its conspiracy theories are ludicrous. But it is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is a culture that has abandoned the very concept of character. We no longer ask what makes a good man. We only ask what makes a quiet one.
So sound your alarms, experts. Wring your hands. But do not pretend that this messiah is the problem. He is merely a looter in a city that has already burned. The real work of rebuilding must begin with a reclamation of our intellectual and moral inheritance. Until then, the manosphere will thrive, and Hollywood will keep producing prophets of decline.
