“La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi più svariati.”
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born: during this time, a great variety of morbid phenomena occur.
— from the prison notebooks of Italian political leader Antonio Gramsci, circa 1930.
While seeking to understand the struggles of our Lost Boys, as we move into 2026 — into the second quarter of the 21st century — I ran across a lecture by author and philosopher Rutger Bregman on the BBC.com website, dated November 25, 2025. The lecture was labeled “A Time of Monsters.”
Mr. Bregman attributed the following loose translation to Italian politician Antonio Gramsci:
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
From what I can tell, political prisoner Gramsci did not use an Italian phrase meaning “the time of monsters” in his notebook. A better translation is probably “a great variety of morbid phenomena occur.”
Both phrases suggest a frightening and difficult moment in history, but the less accurate translation seems to place the blame on individual actors — the “monsters” — rather than on a systemic disease.
The morbid phenomena under consideration in this editorial series could easily be referred to as “toxic masculinity”.
From Wikipedia:
Toxic masculinity is a concept used in academic and media discussions to refer to those aspects of hegemonic masculinity that are socially destructive, such as misogyny, homophobia, and violent domination. These traits are considered “toxic” due in part to their promotion of violence, including sexual assault and domestic violence.
Certainly, “misogyny, homophobia, and violent domination” can be viewed as morbid phenomena.
But that’s not how I understand the basic problem of the Lost Boys.
Here are a few thoughts on the subject from a video posted on BigThink.com, featuring Richard Reeves, author of the 2022 book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why That Matters, and What to Do about It…
…a ‘Book of the Year’ according to the New Yorker and The Economist…
The overall picture is, that on almost every measure, at almost every age, and in almost every advanced economy in the world, the girls are leaving the boys way behind, and the women leaving the men. What nobody expected was that girls and women wouldn’t just catch up to boys and men in education, but would blow right past them and keep going.
Everyone was very focused, quite rightly, on getting to gender equality, getting to gender parity. It’s not that long ago where there was a huge gender gap the other way, and there was huge focus, correctly, in the ’70s and ’80s to really promote women and girls in education.
But the line just kept going — and nobody predicted that. Nobody was saying, “What if gender inequality reemerges in just as big a way as now, in some cases bigger, but the other way around?” And to some extent, everyone’s still trying to get their head around this new world where, at least in education, when you talk about gender inequality, you are pretty much always talking about the ways in which girls and women are ahead of boys and men. And that’s happened in a very, very short period of human history. …
…So in 1972, when Title IX was passed to promote more gender equality in education, there was a 13 percentage point gap in favor of men getting college degrees. Now there’s a 15 percentage point gap in favor of women getting college degrees.
So the gender inequality we see in college today is wider than it was 50 years ago — it’s just the other way around…
Mr. Reeves cites the gender gap in education as one of three key reasons behind the struggles of the Lost Boys. Two additional (and related) factors, he says, are the massive economic changes since 1970, and the changes in family structure.
As women moved into the workforce — partly out of necessity, and partly as an escape from the mind-numbing isolation imposed by the modern “nuclear family” — we found ourselves facing the very real issue of gender parity in the workplace. In 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was signed into law, the typical woman working full time, year-round earned just 59 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts; and when accounting for all workers, regardless of hours or weeks worked, they earned only 37 cents.
But as Mr. Reeves notes, boys have been gradually left behind in terms of education, and as the economy has shifted towards health care, education, administration, service industries and information — and away from agriculture and manufacturing — boys and men have seen traditional male jobs vanish.
From Mr. Reeves:
The reality for men further down the ladder is very different. The economic trends for men have turned downwards along four dimensions. One is wages: Most men today earn less than most men did in 1979 [adjusted for inflation]. In employment, with a drop in labor force participation of eight percentage points, which means nine million men now of prime age are not working. We’ve seen a drop in occupational stature, and so, there are now more men working in employment areas which are seen as lower status than they were in the past. And we’ve also seen a drop in the acquisition of skills, the kinds of skills and education that boys and men need. If boys don’t get educated and men don’t get skilled, they will struggle in the labor market…
Then we come to the third morbid phenomenon, closely related to the two changes mentioned above.
Family structure.