epoch
1yr ago
Maybe it's just my bleak mood today, but this feels pretty spot on to me. And I say that as someone who currently is supporting a traditional family, and a reasonably happy and well-functioning one at that.
The only thing I'd add to your list of malignant factors is the collapse of religion as a force for social cohesion. Despite my inability to believe the absurd supernatural claims, and my full awareness of the vile, so-typically-human machinations and abuses committed by the world's religious power structures, I find myself grieving the loss of shared purpose and higher call religion provided. Grieving for my own sake, but especially for my daughter and for society at large. There doesn't appear to exist anything else that can quite fill that hole in the human psyche, and I find the consequences of that so troubling as I get older that I'm almost prepared to argue that we should keep it around, on balance. But only almost.
Great write-up - I hated it.
Not OP, and I could be reading between the lines in a wishful thinking kinda way, but I took the post differently. You seem to have read it as if they are defining causation for the described conditions. I read it more as observing the conditions and pointing out what results, and who benefits. I don't think that's incompatible with your "individuals following their own incentives" (which I agree with, btw).
As for Leviathan and Cthulhu, it seems pretty clear to me that these are invoked in the same way as Scott Alexander's legendary Moloch.
But here I am putting words in someone else's mouth, which is not usually productive or wise. Apologies in advance if I should have stayed quiet instead.
(minor edit for accuracy)
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