Old white men are depressed

And Burning Man is the new Freemasons

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Marcus Aurelius is sad

There is no demographic group in America with a higher suicide rate than old white men. Despite depression being more prevalent among young people, and despite Native Americans having a higher suicide rate as an ethnic group overall, old white men come out on top. 

As an old white man in training, I’m especially curious about this. This newsletter is about what’s going on with old white men. 

Guns, expectations, and emotions

One explanation is old white men own more guns, and therefore are more successful at killing themselves. Other groups, such as women and youth, report higher rates of depression and suicidal ideation, but not higher suicide rates. Trying to tease out who is the most depressed gets messy when considering old white men are less likely to report depression, but there’s no denying that most suicide is by firearm. 

Then there are the theories that get at the psychological roots of the issue. Jose Del Real wrote a wonderful portrait of a man named Bill from Buffalo, Wyoming. Bill is a suicide prevention specialist. His job entails talking to old depressed men about their issues. I trust his takes. Bill’s theory is that old white men have a deadly combination of the following:

1. High expectations for their lives

2. A reality that does not come close to those expectations

3. Social norms which dissuade expressing negative emotions outside anger

The notion of self-reliance contributes to all 3 issues. Bill’s son Jeremiah jokes that it’s physically impossible to pick yourself up from your own bootstraps. The slogan was originally a joke, and now it’s become an ethos.

Today we call men who abide by this ethos “stoics.” I think stoicism is great if you’re Marcus Aurelius and you need a better mindset to help keep the Roman Empire together. But for most men, being “stoic” simply means you’re disengaged from your own emotions. You couldn’t “feel” sadness if you wanted to, and so those emotions come out sideways instead. It’s not the optimal mindset for dealing with the modern problems of isolation and depression.

Community and the decline of social capital

There is a romanticization of individualism that I think does white men dirty. I think this comes at the expense of what political sociologist Robert Putnam calls “social capital.” Others call it community.

To paraphrase Putnam, social capital is the trust that arises between people who connect with each other. He argues the cause of this decline is the decline of social organizations like church groups, bowling leagues, fraternal organizations, country clubs, and volunteer societies.

It is hard to overestimate the cultural glue these organizations had for white men. To take one example, it is estimated that 20% of American men belonged to fraternal organizations, not counting any other type of social group, in 1901. These are groups like the Freemasons, the Knights of Columbus, and the Society of Odd Fellows. They had silly names but groups like “The Knights of Pythias” had 250,000 members in those days. 

According to Putnam, cable television, urban sprawl, longer work days, and changing cultural norms drew members away from social organizations starting in the 1970s. It’s been getting worse ever since. 

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What this looks like today

And so we have a need for new social forms. Putnam argues that today looks a lot like the post Civil War period, when war and the industrial revolution rendered existing forms of social capital obsolete. Dudes were depressed and so experimented with new forms of social organizations. These include:

• Civic organizations like the Boy Scouts (1910), the NRA (1871), and fraternal organizations

• Social movements like labor and temperance movements

• Public infrastructure like public schools and community centers

We could use more folks experimenting with new forms of connecting with each other. And some folks are! I have hot takes on a few of them:

1. Burning Man is the new Freemasons. Now hear me out. In their heyday in the 1700 and 1800s, Freemasons were a fairly elite group with their own moral code, events, and set of heterodox ideas around the nature of truth and God (which is why the Catholic Church has banned Catholics from joining since 1738). In my own words, they were the countercultural dudes with money who had a penchant for organizing things. Burning Man groups today feel similar. They have their own moral code around relationships (polyamory), inner-work (psychedelics), and community building (parties with a penchant for glitter). A lot of members come from tech. They organize a ton of events.
   

2. Startup cities are the new country clubs. Young people today don’t belong to country clubs for a bunch of reasons. Living in cities and not playing golf are two of them. One trend that seems to be taking its place is startup cities. The first was organized by crypto daddy Vitalik Buterin in 2023 and held in Montenegro (the country). 200+ digital nomads, largely in the crypto space, moved to Montenegro for 2 months to live and work together. Today, over a dozen of these startup cities have either already happened or are in the works. They provide a physical space for like-minded folks to network and become friends. I went to one last month and in the words of Toby Shorin, it was social capital creation on steroids.
   

3. Emotional work groups are the new church groups. Regular churchgoers tend to be more women than men. This is not specific to Christianity nor the US, but simply put there’s a hole that needs to be filled for men seeking spiritual and emotional support. One answer lies in men’s groups. Another lies in AA and other 12 step programs. Others lie in groups devoted to certain workout groups or hobbies where there is an emotional release (I would like to posit that mosh pits are such an example).

These are all fairly niche today. I don’t think they will be in 20 years. Something has to fill the void that our general lack of social cohesion has created. And while the rise of social media has perhaps led to more people opting out of in-person social organizations, all of these new groups use social media to market and organize. The new wave will rise because of the Internet, not in spite of it.

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