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Notes -
Why Should I Care?
I recently greatly enjoyed Naraburns' post on the life of Dylan, so I thought I would give back by putting together my thoughts as someone that empathizes greatly with Dylan, and would probably be picking pineapples right next to him if I didn't happen to be born with some aptitude for shape rotation. To provide some context, I've been in a bit of a malaise for the last few days, having had a rough week at work, and I get into a spiral of fantasizing about quitting my job when the thought hits me - why, exactly, do I even care about the job? Why do I actually care about contributing to society?
As any good economist knows, people at scale generally do what they're incentivized to do. Yet from the point of view of a young man it's increasingly harder to get a bite out of carrots historically used to incentivize men to act pro-socially, while simultaneously most of the sticks and fences previously used to corral people's worst impulses have disintegrated. Viewed from a sufficiently cynical lens, it becomes more and more rational from a self-interest perspective to drop out of the system and become a disaffected bum, and indeed this does seem to be reflected in the male labor force participation rate.
The elephant in the room is, of course, dating discourse. It is absolutely true and subject to much discussion amongst these types of circles that relationship formation and TFR is dropping off a cliff in almost all countries on the planet. Everyone has their own hot take as to what's going wrong and who's at fault; personally, I just think it comes down to incentives.
Men no longer need women for sexual gratification [when HD video porn exists] or domestic labor [when household appliances exist], women no longer need men for physical or economic security [when careers and the state will provide] and there's significantly less status or social pressure for either gender to get into and stay in relationships early, unless you run in religious or traditional circles. It's a similar story for having children; most people, if asked, will at least nominally say that they want children, yet revealed preference is for global TFR collapse. In agrarian societies having children isn't a great burden relatively and they become useful quite quickly, whereas in modern societies having child(ren) will result in significant changes to your lifestyle, and impose notable financial burden [less than what most PMC's might think, but certainty an extant one] for at least twenty years for a very uncertain return; it's a hard sell to the modal person to make sacrifices to their quality of life and economic stability for the sake of very expensive pets [from an economic perspective].
As a result, polarization between the sexes is at an all-time high as a result as neither sex really needs the other, and left to their own devices the observed tendency is that they mostly end up self-segregating. For men that do still want a relationship and marriage, this means it's the hardest it's ever been; in-person ways for singles to meet have all but disappeared, dating apps are perhaps the most demonic application of technology ever invented, and the very high amount of options that most women now hold [including that to eschew dating altogether] heavily disincentivizing making any sort of commitment [to be clear, almost all men would and do act in similar ways given the same breadth of options as well].
I don't agree with the blackpillers, in the sense that I think the majority of people could eventually find a partner if they put in enough effort [which might be an incredible amount depending on the starting point!]. However, it is true that we went from a society where the standard life script ended up with everyone except for a few oddballs partnered up, to one where the standard life script results in most men ending up alone unless they spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on dating or are exceptionally [hot/rich/charismatic/lucky] in some way. Most people really just go with the flow, and hence increasingly more people end up alone.
Even for those who do manage to summit the mountain, the returns on entering into a relationship and marriage seem to be diminished for most men. It's likely to be expensive financially [I'm not convinced by Caplan-style arguments that relationships save you money, the most expensive budget items like housing, childcare and healthcare are largely rivalrous or wouldn't otherwise exist, and it's reasonably well studied that relationships where the woman makes more money suffer] and of course there's little to really secure commitment or incentivize sticking it out if something goes wrong; getting divorced is one of the easiest ways to have your life ruined, after all.
At the end of the day, modern relationship formation is less about the practical benefits as was the case for almost all of human history, and almost entirely about self-esteem and self-actualization; hence the rise of incels [who are bereft of the validation of being desired, not the literal act of sex] and romantasy fiction. How much does it validate me that I have a high status / hot / rich partner willing to have sex and be seen in public with me? Have I now truly found my soulmate, the ideal parent for my children? This is, of course, an impossible standard to meet for the vast majority of people and relationships and hence most people who think this way end up dissatisfied and unhappy - and yet without the illusion of self-actualization what else is there really to gain bonding yourself to someone else with a bond that is not a bond?
With all is said and done, as the mountain grows ever-harder to summit and the rewards for reaching the peak become ever-increasingly a mirage, I think it's an increasingly rational choice for many people to decide not to climb and to try and find contentment at the bottom. That's certainly how I've been feeling lately, at the very least.
This brings me to my next point, where if a first world man decides that they no longer want to conquer the mountain, there's not really much else that buying into modern capitalism can offer them in many cases. It is of course a stereotype that men are happy living in squalor, and that women be shopping, but I've found it to be remarkably accurate; women make up something like 70% to 80% of consumer spending, and in general it's motivation to be a provider that drives many men to work as hard as they can, most of whom otherwise are pretty happy living with a mattress and WiFi.
If one's lost the motivation or opportunity to provide, suddenly most of what remains expensive in modern abundant society doesn't really matter; you don't have to spend money on up-keeping a lifestyle and status symbols to attract a mate, and you no longer need to spend most of your life paying off a house in the best school district you can afford to keep the wife happy and the child as advantaged as possible.
Similarly, the stick of impoverishment is no real threat in any rich welfare state; He who does not work, neither shall he eat is now comically false, food [and non-housing living expenses in general] are pretty trivial to cover if you're smart/frugal about it and if you're not the gibs will probably cover them for you anyways. Housing is a real problem that's been exacerbated near-universally across the world, but if you no longer need to provide for a family or make a lot of money there's still plenty of ways to keep a roof over your head without working too hard; living out of a van, moving to somewhere where the jobs aren't great but living is cheap, or the good old solution of failing to launch.
Anecdotally, my college friend group includes a guy who dropped out to live with his parents and do gig work and a high-powered lawyer who inherited a few million, and despite their significantly different socioeconomic classes still live materially similar lives and are still good friends. Sure, the lawyer can afford to live in a massive house, fly business and collect a bunch of expensive trinkets, but when it comes down to it neither of them worry about their basic needs, and spend most of their leisure time doing the same things; working out, playing the same video games, watching the same tv/movies/anime, scrolling too much on social media and going traveling to similar places from time from time.
Of course being wealthier and more powerful gives you more optionality in the face of adversity, and that's great if you're born into wealth or are exceptional/lucky human capital, but honestly the vast majority of people are never going to have enough power or money to matter if anything really goes wrong with their life, even if they spend their entire lives grinding and buying into the system. "Making it" to middle manager at a big firm or owning a small business doesn't save you from targeted lawfare, developing late-stage cancer where the experimental treatment is going to cost a few million out of pocket, or your home burning down and getting denied by insurance. And of course, no amount of money can save you from the true black swans e.g unaligned superintelligence, gain of function^2 electric boogaloo or nuclear war - how many young people in the first world really believe that they'll be taking money out of their retirement fund and living life as normal in 2080?.
So if the dating market is FUBAR and money has questionable marginal utility, what else is left to encourage men to work hard? Well, people will think you're a loser and low status if you don't work or you work a shitty job, maybe that will work? That's true, and historically granting young man status when they do pro-social things has been a pretty effective motivator.
Yet now we live in a highly globalized society for better or worse. No matter how far you are up your chosen totem poles, status has gone global; it's easy to look up, see who's still above you and feel bad about yourself. Chad is probably just a twitter DM away, in fact! Being unemployed or a gig worker might be low status, but even "good" jobs don't feel much higher status either; it's hard to feel the average software engineer or electrician job is particularly high status when constantly inundated with people who are orders of magnitude more successful. To me, it feels like the endgame is SoKo or China; competition for "high status" becomes more and more ludicrous and absurd, and everyone else sits on the sidelines resigned to feeling like a loser even if their lives are materially still great.
Faced with such competitiveness, you can either throw yourself into the maw and try and win an winnable game, or decide to tap out of the game altogether. Sure, there will always be those with immense will to power that will maximize for status, to strive for the stars and win at at all costs, but realistically most people don't have such strength of will. If the only options are play and lose and not play at all, it increasingly feels like the best play is to just drop out of striving for status altogether; it helps if you're no longer invested in dating or careerism, the arenas where status is most instrumental...
This piece ended up being significantly longer than I intended, and really I don't expect any sympathy nor do I have any solutions [much less politically viable and moral ones] to what I see as a deeply society-wide malaise. I have a deep respect for the incredibly autistic open-source emulator developer, the Japanese master sushi chef, and the Amish craftsman, those who still Care about their crafts in the truest sense of the word. Yet one cannot choose to win the lottery of fascinations, one cannot choose to be born into a high-trust society, and one cannot choose to have faith when it does not exist.
At the end of the day, it's hard to argue it's not a triumph of society that the modal first worlder spends most of their time wallowing in comfort and engaging in zero-sum status struggles in a world where so many still suffer. Yet what is great can easily be lost, and modernity as it exists today cannot survive without the buy-in of young men. Maybe it doesn't matter, that in the end us dysgenic neurotics will end up being weeded out of the gene pool, and that future populations will be able to break out of this local minima and take over the world. Perhaps the prayers for the machine god to deliver us salvation will come true and the priests shall finally immanentize the eschaton so that none of this matters.
In some ways it feels like to me that the barbarians are banging on the gates while nobody else notices or cares, as everyone else seems to be whiling away the hours eating bread and going to the circus. But well, if nobody else is manning the walls either, why should I be the one who cares?
You started your post with:
You followed up with 20 different ways society fails men, whom you depict as passive victims in your narrative. None of these actually answer the question you started with - okay, in the past men could be decidedly average and the church would still furnish them with a doe-eyed virgin and 20 acres of land on their 18th birthday. Even if you and all the NEETs lived in that world, what's the point of getting married? Of having children, raising them well, working to feed yourself? Why do you bother to call your elderly parents?
If your answers were orgasms, economic utility, economic utility, not starving and I don't talk to my parents on a regular basis then your problems run a lot deeper than dating market hard and my life is pointless because the state won't let me starve. If you don't want to do your job then don't, but quitting to pick pineapples isn't going to make you any happier until you find something larger than your own ego and physical pleasure to live for.
I dunno, one can be noticeably happier on the pineapple plantations while still suffering from a lack of larger meaning, and indeed that's a pretty fair description of how it worked out for me.
There's also some ambiguity here (and in the original pineapples post)--is "picking pineapples" meant to denote physical work in the outdoors, maybe somewhere exotic, maybe seasonal, maybe paired with travel during the offseason? (Planting trees in Canada, fishing in Alaska, wildland fire, etc. etc.). Or is it merely supposed to be any kind of low-wage minimum viable employment? In the former case in particular, I can see it being quite a bit better than Office Spaceing and swiping harder, while still being ultimately meaningless. In the latter case, maybe less so (though even then, "work a mcjob and spend half the year training muay thai in rural Thailand and living like a local" might fall into the same bucket as the first class of jobs.).
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Curious what your answer to this is. I realize I've basically asked you "what is the meaning of life", but I like your writing and so assume I will like your thoughts on the matter.
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What's your personal solution to this problem? I ask sincerely but also by way of justifying the comment I actually wanted to make, which was that I haven't seen you around for a bit and am happy you're still here.
Carrying on, one of my major frustrations in modern discourse is that there doesn't seem to be much individual reflection on what the point of life (or anything) even is, let alone widespread agreement. "Gratifying the human limbic system" seems to be what we're settling on and that puts us squarely in OP's dilemma.
I've been here the whole time. Lurking is just my natural state. This is the only forum I've participated in across thirty odd years on the internet.
It's always been easy on a personal level. I have some innate affinity for and take pleasure from responsibility, returning the shopping cart, and working towards the flourishing of family/community/nation/humanity in that order. I appreciate that this is not a generalizable solution, although it's one I wish we could evangelize.
If one's moral framework is entirely built around one's own pleasure and benefit (or limbic gratification as you say), then sure, none of the above matter and anything I say will fall on deaf ears. There's no logical argument I can provide to convince you that I'm right. But frankly, not calling your parents or raising your children or treating your wife well or reading books or staying fit is, for lack of a better term, a bitch move, no? At the risk of typical-minding after already admitting I'm weird, I think nearly every man has this urge or understands what I mean when I say that.
Both sides of the aisle generally agree that the left fails to provide role models for men. Someone needs to wrest the banner of self-improvement, fitness, hygiene, stoicism, etc. from the Tates of the world and divorce it from the more toxic aspects of masculinity.
They just need a better physique and more charisma than I can muster.
The time is ripe for the birth of a new religion. Gather thy flocks, and adapt thy sermons to tiktok.
The latter can't be done. What feminists deem to be the more toxic aspects of masculinity are essential to it.
'I hate it,' quoth the hater.
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Deeply in this boat and curious how they respond. Having kids is probably the single best way to add purpose to your life, but this gets circular very very fast.
Yeah, I have a friend who says that 'meaning' is just another word for kids.
It certainly helps! But I find Christianity to be better on a personal level and it has the advantage of applying to the many, many people who won't (and some who shouldn't) have kids.
The Christian perspective is that there are two valid paths in life. Marriage-and-children-if-possible, and monasticism, which equates to a life of service to others and the greater good, in both cases as guided by the Church. I think this is a healthy perspective and would help a lot of people trapped in the modern abyss.
I am decidedly atheistic, although I do sometimes wonder if it's worth it to try to psy-op myself into a belief system. Not sure if I could though.
When I was younger, I thought Western societies abandonment of religion in favor of enlightenment/science/whatever was the natural progress of civilization, and an amazing thing. Now I think we've made a horrible mistake, but I don't think we can really go back.
Whoops!
Second reply for different topic:
What do you know (and how do you know it) that would stop you here?
Putting on my atheist hat, what I see is something like this:
Being is. Something exists, rather than nothing. The nature of Being is structured such that conscious life arises and starts thirsting for a relationship with a Creator beyond the bounds of the universe. Probability is a silly thing to bring into this matter imo; this is simply what is.
Meanwhile there's plentiful reason to suppose the simulation hypothesis, our status as Boltzmann Brains, etc. or at least to collapse into methodological solipsism. What doesn't make sense is to assume that the external world we perceive is as we perceive it, or that our faculties allow us to satisfactorily observe and evaluate its nature or scope.
Our existence is fundamentally incomprehensible. Within this scenario we either don't have free will (in which case, whatever, we're just going to do what we're going to do and the consequences if any will find us) or we do in which case we're left with the question of what is worth doing.
The two options would seem to be 1) temporal hedonism or 2) reference to an external source of value, e.g. a Creator who provides a possibility for ultimate consequence to exist and for some choices and outcomes to be objectively better than others.
Given 1) I would agree with Camus that suicide is the only interesting question.
Given 2) I find that all kinds of amazing possibilities open up and suddenly life is full of wonderful (and terrible) potential.
This choice is an individual one, but I've never quite comprehended those who choose 1).
From Aurelius' Meditations.
This is the kind of thing you hear when someone's peddling something that they know will never be made distinguishable from non-reality by any demonstrable method whatsoever. Maybe it sounds good to believers eager to quit getting kicked around by observations of reality, but you could use lines like this to argue for literally anything
Yes, literally all belief is faith-based and we should be very careful about where to place that faith.
All maps are wrong; some maps are true. If it's blurry but gets you where you're going it's better than technically-accurate but leaves you stranded.
Anyone who would complain about this state of affairs had better take it up with Reality.
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Who said that the unity, order, design of (ii) are going to be favorable to you?
Hence the 'terrible' and the 'faith' in my post.
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Pursuant to a few posts up the chain, what do you think the point of life is? Or, if it hasn't one, what do you think is worth doing while alive, and why?
Yes, it was a horrible mistake, which validates Christian priors. Re: going back I'm not so sure. Seems to me that the problem should work itself out over time, though with hellish collateral damage.
The Old Testament is basically a long list of examples of what happens to a people when they stop worshiping God and start worshiping anything else. Eventually the survivors come back around and the cycle starts anew. Humanity is generally a faithless bride, which is why the example of Mary is so vital.
I'm not sure. I think I've been having a gentle ~third life crisis about this for the last year or two.
I think the "point" of life is to procreate at a base level. Because life seems to be a self-replicating collection of molecules that enjoy being alive, and replicating ensures this process continues. However, procreating is hard these days, and so is a while away yet.
I'm going to think on this more and maybe my answer will change after a few hours of writing, but my initial gut response is that aside from procreation, life is about maximizing your subjective sense of pleasant/enjoyable experiences, and minimizing the bad ones. The logical endpoint of this is wire heading however, which I don't like and is not inspiring at all. You should also seek to increase other's enjoyment of life, and not make their lives worse, this is slightly more inspiring.
I like how you anchored it in actions (and their "why") though, that I will need to think more on.
Incidentally the novelty you're finding here is reflective of a split in Christianity.
In Western Christianity, 'faith' has become somewhat conflated with 'belief', i.e. a sort of propositional system where one evaluates a statement and says "Yes I think that's true" or "No I don't."
The New Testament says that "Faith without works is dead", which has caused much consternation in the West. Which is it? Believing a proposition or performing actions? What 'saves' us?
In Eastern Christianity, faith is understood to have much less to do with propositional belief and more to do with action. Let me explain my perspective here a little.
Faith is acting as though something is true despite not knowing for sure. When you sit in a chair it might buckle and injure you, but you're operating in faith that it won't. When the plan is for someone to pick you up at a minor rural airport at 10PM with no other transportation options available, you're engaging in faith by showing up expectantly, even if he might have forgotten or died in an accident along the way.
To have faith in Christ is to behave as though following Him should be your highest priority. To believe that but act otherwise is to break faith. Make sense? As the Bible says, even the demons believe that Christ is who He says He is.
It would be too great a digression to go into Orthodox theology a la Palamas but long story short I think it's basically correct to say that all propositions re: God are approximations and therefore necessarily partly incorrect. There's not really anything that I intellectually think is 'true' about God, because all truth about God is beyond mortal understanding.
To be a Christian requires some (possibly temporary) dogmatic intellectual belief, yes, but of surprisingly few propositions, and those universally of the sort that we might call unfalsifiable. But the much greater part of being a Christian is acting accordingly. Go to the liturgy. Receive communion in the hope that it's actually doing something. Confess your failings and strive your hardest to be more Christlike.
Like passion in a marriage, belief comes and goes. But love is a choice, and faith is always on the table.
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