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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?'
I feel like any life script involves people going into a dominant industry. It would have to be known for years that this industry is up and coming or well established enough that it can accommodate everyone at good salary for their entire lives. I know that I personally want to instill the value into my kids that they when they come of age, they should have a good look at the world, consider what are the major dominant fields, and get a degree that will help them get a job in a dominant field. Doing this drastically reduces the luck required to be and stay gainfully employed. I know too many people with English degrees who have far too much trouble finding work, or finding work that pays more then $50k/year. Also, any industry where the labor market it demand-driven is going to make employees more comfortable, whether we are talking about salaries, benefits, or even just the leeway to not have to be "on" all the time.
For the boomer generation, I'm tempted to say that this dominant field was education. For whatever reason, I know a lot of teachers from that generation. And I certainly know that they were paid much better then teachers are now, including amazing benefits and pension. However as we all know, education generally no longer offers benefits like that and no longer offers even middling salary.
For our generation, perhaps the dominant industry is software. Of course it's possible that now software is under threat of no longer being able to hold this title. There are fewer jobs, lots of layoffs, lower salaries, and everyone feels under threat. Perhaps this is what happens when the boom is over and an industry is no longer dominant. In which case, I only hope that there will be a new dominant industry that springs up so my kids (or even I) can feel like there's a new, safe way to have our lives be supported.
For boomers, all white collar industries were huge growth industries; whether it was accounting, consulting, finance, it didn’t really matter.
Not just white collar, though; this was the era of the unionised blue-collar job where you got great pay, great benefits, and could look forward to a good pension.
True, there were good times. But they ended in 2008.
Imagine you're a boomer. You work a GM plant making very good pay ($70/hr total comp). Then 2008 happens and you're laid off. You're 58 years old. Too young to retire, too old to retrain.
One the other hand, white-collar Boomers had it truly good. Hell, my Boomer parents earn more now than they did when they were working with all their pensions, investments, etc...
I've visited factories and they don't seem like places I'd want to work. They do the same tasks over and over. It seems like hell.
Can confirm. For a while I worked in a factory making dish detergent. 12-hour shifts, on your feet the whole time, doing repetitive tasks, never seeing the sun.
On the other hand, I got really trim working there; and I had a lot of time to think, which I did like. But yeah, life would stretch out awfully long if you had to spend it there.
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