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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?
I usually relate to, if not agree with, a lot of online discourse but dating discourse and the battle of the sexes is the one thing where I feel a fundamentally disorienting disconnect between online and IRL. It's always so stunning and unrelatable when I read stuff like this.
I'm an early-30s straight guy, currently have a serious girlfriend, and when dating, actively date women between 18 and early-30s. It feels like everyone I meet in a dating context is a decent woman, marriage material (conditional on there being mutual attraction), and has the eventual goal of marriage + having kids. Well educated, bright, agreeable, high achievers. Everywhere I go is full of attractive women like this, all rearing to go. All the straight guys I know are in good relationships, many married, some with kids. The whole thing feels very healthy and positive.
I like women, in fact I love women. I love going on dates with them, I love hanging out with them, I love flirting with them, I love hooking up with them, I love dating them. I'm excited to get married someday. I've probably been on 250 dates, had sex with 125 women, been in some serious relationships, etc. etc. It's all so much fun. I hardly ever have a negative experience; I could do this forever except at some point I want to start a family. I really do not understand the seething hatred I see some guys express online towards women. How can you hate them? How can porn and gooning and videogames be a substitute for taking some beautiful girl out to a bar and getting laid? Why should you care? Because it's fun, you're built for this, you want to get married and have kids.
And women love men. My current girlfriend is a dancer in a major ballet company. I hang out with her and her ballet friends. They're top 1% in terms of looks and talent. They all have nice, normal boyfriends. One of the bfs is a poor PhD student. One is a random software engineer at some company. Just normal guys. One is one of the few straight guys in the company. The ones who aren't in relationships are dating, typically on apps (I met my gf on an app), and overall just having positive experiences. There's minor drama here and there, of course, but again it all seems super positive and there's no seething battle of the sexes going on. The women want to get married and have kids. It's true for the ballerinas and its true for the SF tech girlies and the PE girls and the McKinsey girls and the HR ladies too. Obviously, selection bias is showing me the more social women in dating, but all my coworkers, female friends, etc., are basically in the same spot.
Where is this all coming from? Is it rejection? I get rejected a lot, who cares? Do a lot of men not share my love of women?
This kind of reads like a troll post from a new account, but I guess I'll bite.
If this is all true you're clearly on the very right end of the bell-curve in terms of sexual success and social milieu, it's like a multi-millionaire heir asking why people complain about housing affordability when they were gifted three on their birthday.
I suppose I can't really relate personally, in the sense that my libido is quite low and I don't have a lot of interest in casual dating or sex.
The median man probably does, in the sense they would mostly like to be Chad and Casanova who can fuck a lot of hot women, but obviously this is out of reach for the vast majority of men even if they work as hard as possible.
Do you have a strong romantic drive, or is the concept of marriage for you mostly a material alliance for childrearing? If you lean mostly towards the latter, I think that would absolutely contribute to your feeling that marriage in the modern concept has little to offer.
Also not a fan of casual sex, but my libido is moderate to high. I just enjoy sex with an intimate partner in a romantic context a lot more than casual trysts. I can’t have a tryst without catching feelings — not overwhelming passion or anything, I’m not insane, but I end up wanting to make a connection. I’m probably in the top 10% of men in terms of… romance orientation? Physical affection? Romanticalness? So the incentive for me to date is strong, even if I never wanted to marry, even if I never wanted kids. So long as there’s a woman out there with sweet eyes and a warm smile, I’m going to want to look deeply into them and smile back.
Yeah, if put in those terms I definitely consider marriage primarily as an material alliance for childrearing purposes.
I enjoy fiction about romance occasionally, but I suppose I'm blackpilled/realistic/cynical enough to think about romance (in the eros sense) in Roman terms, as a force that wounds men and drives them crazy; that the initial burst of limerance for someone that doesn't exist will always fade with time, and that it has very significant risks to my health and happiness.
At the end of the day, romantic drive (in the storge sense) is definitely more something that would hypothetically be nice, not something that substantially motivates me day to day.
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