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Notes -
What Happened to Society's Life Script
In the fifties, the American dream was, for the vast majority of people, pretty obvious. You find a job with the main employer of the town, whether that was a coal mine or a factory or a railyard or whatever the case may be. You marry, if not literally the girl next door, then something close; maybe a high school sweetheart. If you were a woman you were then expected to stay home and be a housewife, and except for a few very highly-female coded jobs, that's just what you did. If you were a man you might have been required to serve in the army beforehand, but few people went to college; only if you were wealthy and/or very, very smart. It mostly wasn't your decision either way, about any of it. 'Should I go into the military, or skilled labor, or go to college?' wasn't a question very many people had to ask; usually what you did next after finishing high school was readily apparent, often literally by having only a single option or a very small set thereof. If you did have the opportunity to go to college- most people didn't- both the university and your parents had much more say in what you did there. And I think we should note- the vast majority of people here could find respect as a worker bee. This is important because the vast majority of people have to be worker bees to have a functioning society.
Today, that is not the case. Everyone who wants to can go to university, or near enough. Many people stay in university long past the point at which it does any good, in point of fact. The military is 100% volunteer, and few people live with access to a single major employer. Young people can't find spouses, and these days don't seem to be able to blunder into relationships either. Every individual can, with certain reasonable limits, do what he wishes, and nobody with institutional power seems keen to say no, that's stupid, do this instead.
And it seems that we have lost something, there. Occasionally conservative pundits will start talking about the success sequence- finish high school, work full time, get married, and then have children. There's some other obvious things that go along with it, like 'don't do drugs'. But the gist of the success sequence is, well, a (somewhat vague)life script. And realistically the success sequence is the sort of thing our culture should be putting more effort into promoting; it isn't the default message despite every idea therein being a good one.
I think the youth agree with me, here. Jordan Peterson's popularity, notoriously, came from offering boomer dad advice. Recently there's been discussion of positive male role models to replace Andrew Tate; Andrew Tate's pitch isn't much different from tons of other redpill influencers. What's different is he's selling 'you, too, can be like me, just do x, y, z'. Obviously he's a lying grifter, but his fanbase are mostly teens. What replacement for his (dumb)life script are these positive male role models offering? The pro-social version of Andrew Tate isn't the male feminist activist. It's Mike Rowe.
Unfortunately, "work hard, at a quite possibly unpleasant job" isn't a great sales pitch. But I want to circle back to the point I made ending my discussion of the fifties- most people have to be worker bees. In a functioning society there are few girlbosses because there simply are not very many bosses- the average person will always make the median income, live a not particularly impressive lifestyle, and live in flyover. To put it more pithily, average people will always be average. And being average isn't, well, a flashy and appealing thing. In the past, lack of options meant people became average worker bees. Today, people have the option not to do that; they may not be Indian chiefs and fighter pilots and surgeons and other high status jobs instead, but they're being something, and usually that something is below average, gig workers and basement dwellers. It has to be said, therefore- most people can't figure it out on their own. For every unrecognized genius there's a dozen schizos. Boring middle-aged advice serves a useful purpose; to throw out the social pressure to follow it was a mistake. The question becomes, then, 'how do we bring it back?'
Snobbery is not the contempt of the upper class for the lower. In fact, snobbery is the insecurity of the middle class striver who thinks he might be found out.
Prior to the modern age, there was a fundamental disconnect between the classes. A nobleman was better than a commoner. He wasn't necessarily smarter, or better looking, or more talented. He was better as a condition of his birth and nothing could change that.
Now we live in a meritocracy and things are much more brutal. Nowadays, the rich are actually much smarter and better looking and more talented than the poor. They studied hard, got into an Ivy, and then got the big job at the bulge bracket bank. Do you suck? It's not because you were born poor, it's because you actually suck. That's a bitter pill to swallow.
What's worse, we are constantly bombarded with images of the successful. We watch Sex and the City, and see women gallivanting around the city, boasting fake prestigious jobs, gigantic apartments, and dating tall, handsome successful men who are far out of their league. And these women weren't born rich (except Charlotte). They just moved to New York with a dream. So what's wrong with you?
Comparison is the thief of joy.
We live in a society where we are constantly being bombarded with images of the fabulous life. The life that we could obtain if we only worked a little harder. It's almost in reach.
This is highly contentious. You've got a lot of work ahead of you still to think it's that easy to adduce the claim that we live in a meritocracy. Birthright status may not be a formal doctrine of our political thinking anymore, but informal relationships, connections and patronage networks still by 'far' play the largest role out of any single variable in success. And thinking Ivy League schools and large bank accounts are a sufficient proxy for merit leaves a lot unaccounted for. Even books like the Bell Curve couldn't adequately control for and factor out the importance of 'luck' as far as their analysis goes. And luck matters far more than talent.
Any ideologies that depend on any version of Just World Theory are false and should be abandoned.
Nobody believies in "Just World Theory", it is a stawman. I believe stawman "Magic Dirt Theory" is more accurate for your thinking than "Just World Theory" for your opponents.
? Sounds interesting if you'd care to share more about what you mean
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