The title is a cliché, a well-worn phrase used to sell everything from self-help books to artisanal soap. But a cliché is often a truth that has become tired from overuse. The question is pertinent because a growing number of men in the West feel a fundamental disconnect from the world they inhabit. The numbers tell a story, but they lack a human voice. They report that young men are less likely to finish university, more likely to struggle with mental health, and increasingly disengaged from the traditional structures that once defined their path. As a corporate lawyer, however, I don’t deal in broad demographics. I deal in individual cases and the human cost of a failing system, one brief at a time.
I sit in meetings with men barely a few years my senior who have climbed the ladder of their careers with the relentless ambition their fathers taught them. They have the degrees, the salaries, and the corner office. Yet, behind the veneer of their carefully constructed lives, there is a quiet, unsettling sense of unease. They are a generation that has inherited the spoils of a particular Western model of masculinity, only to find that the spoils are rusting and the model itself is being quietly but deliberately dismantled. Their anchor, once a certainty, now seems to be a ghost.
This is the central question I find myself asking. As a woman who has had to fight for every inch of her professional territory, I have little patience for lamentations. The world, after all, does not owe you a purpose. But what happens when the very institutions that once provided young men that purpose, such as the military, the trades, the patriarchal family unit, and even now higher education, are either weakened, rebranded, or declared toxic by the prevailing culture?
This is not a problem to be solved with self-help platitudes or shallow affirmations. It is a phenomenon, a systemic shift with profound consequences. The old ways of being a man are no longer tenable, but the new ones are vague, unproven, and often contradictory. So, which way, then? Where does a man, told for generations that he is the architect of his own destiny, find a blueprint when the foundational principles of that architecture have been deemed unsound?
The Erosion of Foundations
To understand this phenomenon, one must first look at the foundations that have been eroded. For generations, a man’s worth was often intrinsically tied to his utility; his ability to provide, to build, and to protect. This was a straightforward, if unforgiving, contract. The industrial age offered clear pathways to a life of purpose through manual labour and skilled trades. A man could work in a factory, a mine, or on a ship, and in doing so, he could build a home, raise a family, and earn the respect of his community. His value was tangible; it could be measured in steel, coal, or the wages he brought home.
But the post-industrial economy has systematically dismantled these anchors. The factories have gone silent, the mines are shuttered, and the old trades, once sources of immense pride and skill, are often derided or outsourced. The new economy, built on services, information, and abstract knowledge, places a premium on communication and emotional intelligence. For reasons both biological and social, these skills have been cultivated differently in men and women.
The result is not just economic displacement, but a crisis of identity. The new rules for success are not clear to men who were, for a hundred years, taught a different set of rules. We see this in the widening chasm in education. Female enrollment in universities now far outstrips that of men, a trend that is not slowing. While women are moving into these new knowledge-based sectors with great success, many young men seem to be left with a false choice: either conform to an academic system that does not always cater to their strengths, or reject it entirely and risk a lifetime of low-wage, insecure work.
This is where the progressive narrative fails. It correctly identifies the inequities of the old patriarchal system and champions the liberation of women from its confines. But in its haste to dismantle the old, it has often failed to offer a meaningful path forward for the men who once populated that system. The conversation has focused on what men must relinquish: privilege, control, and power, without offering a new, compelling sense of purpose to replace it. A man is told to be “better,” but the definition of that word remains nebulous, shifting with the prevailing cultural wind.
The Central Dilemma
The systems have changed, but people are not abstractions. Everyday I meet young men raised with the unwritten code of his father’s generation: work hard, be stoic, and provide for your family. However, the modern world punishes them for doing what they have been told, terming age-old traditional expressions of masculinity as “toxic”, demonizing young men in an ever confounding world where norms change on a silly whim.
So what do we tell young men? Do we tell them to turn back to the past, to the ideals of classical Western masculinity such as stoicism, duty, and the unwavering pursuit of excellence? These are powerful virtues, forged in antiquity, and they offer a compelling anchor in a chaotic world. They teach a man to cultivate his character, to find his purpose within, regardless of external validation. There is an undeniable power in their timelessness.
Or, do we offer a different path, one forged in the very chaos he finds himself in? A new form of masculine identity that is less defined by what he provides and more by how he adapts? This is a more complex and ill-defined road. It requires him to embrace a flexibility that goes against every fibre of his upbringing. It is a path without a map.
This, then, is the central dilemma we must confront. Forget the academic jargon and the political posturing. Look at the men in your own life: your brothers, your sons, your colleagues. Do you see a clear sense of direction or bewilderment? The answer to “Which Way, Modern Man?” is not a simple choice between past and future. It is an act of creation, a deliberate and disciplined search for a new anchor in a world that has cut the old ones loose. The conversation starts not by telling men who they ought to be, but by asking them where they intend to go.
