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Yeah I just think a decent chunk of men are gravitating towards this existence. My wife's youngest brother is essentially this in his mid-twenties. Games and maintains a hospitality job, but no interest in further education or really building anything. He's 'productive' in the sense that he covers his own expenses but he just doesn't really have any ambitions beyond a gaming laptop, discord etc. I'm surprised your example's in his 40s, but I know quite a large population of late-teens to early-thirties guys who are essentially this. They're not unhappy, just kinda... dudeist. They're not buying into society since they just can't really be incentivized unless they randomly hit it off with a girl one day (which has been the catalyst of the majority of times I've seen somebody right the course in their mid twenties)
I think the messiness of modern dating might be part of it, since IMO a large part of what drives low-motivation men beyond this local minimum is either attempting to get laid or the pressures of a significant other.
In theory this could have been me, once upon a time. I was more inclined to go the "Save as much as possible, invest, move to a low cost of living country" route. I had spreadsheets once upon a time with some rough calculations of how much I'd need to save to live in Romania without any dependents for the rest of my life. I'd more or less given up on women, my girlfriend having left me for another man the day before my father died.
Tangent, that was almost 20 years ago now. Sometimes I actually forget that I was seeing a girl around that time, and she had in fact dumped me the day before my father died. All I remember anymore is the day he died. When I do remember that lady, it's almost like a curiosity. Some weird anecdote that happened to someone else. Not me, happily married with a kid.
Back on point, when I was in my 20's I was an asshole. I mean, I still am an asshole, but in my 20's I was a major asshole. But when I think back, everyone in my 20's was a major asshole. We were high off youth, and whatever minor achievements we'd made. Maybe our brand new degree. Maybe some job that seems like hot shit to us at the time, but was really just another job. A lot of women loved showing off engagement rings for marriages that have long since collapsed. May have had something to do with them also bragging about how short a leash they kept their husbands on, or how "well trained" they'd gotten them. Sometimes I cite 25 as peak cockiness. Something about that feels about right to me as the apex of youthful exuberance. It doesn't fall off immediately after that. But if bad things haven't humbled you yet, they probably start to.
I don't know how you get two assholes to pair off and endure each other until they stop being assholes. I don't know how you get 25 year olds to not be assholes. I don't know how you make the whole experience of having your ego sandblasted off by other assholes so demoralizing you don't tune out of society all together. I have no idea how any of this used to work, or what other generations experienced. I was raised on self esteem and main characters like Zack Morris, Ferris Bueller and Parker Lewis.
Wild speculation but I think accidental incidental pregnancy in the days before birth control plus getting shepherded into the workforce at a younger age probably helped mitigate a fair bit of the natural trend towards assholing. Also prior to women entering the workforce there was more of an impetuous to atleast present a pretense of meekness and agreeability in order to escape the household.
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Lowers helmet
Keep firing, assholes!
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
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I think dating is a big part of it. There is no motivation for me to grind or hustle or finish my PhD fast because I don't see girlfriend/wife opportunities coming very easily.
Yeah or if they are gonna come it's more going to be about solving the dating app metagame than simply hustling on making yourself a productive member of society.
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