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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?'
The life script is still present and unless you are the type of human being that requires society to nudge you into doing stuff (i.e. minimal self initiative, little internal locus of control) it is easier to follow than ever with greater rewards than ever.
The one exception to this might be the part about finding a good partner, but that's only completely broken because society doesn't nudge people into being prosocial so partners who in a different world may have been good turn out to be disposable cutlery tier instead and hence you have a harder deal finding a good person as there are fewer of them around. But even then there are things like regularly going to religious congregations and having parents who maintained strong community networks that help you out here (and if your parents didn't that's their fault, you can hardly blame society for your parents failing at a key social role they should play for their children).
If you have it in you to reject the modern day Satan's insidious messaging you can still make something decent and respectable out of yourself and leave a positive legacy on the world after living a satisfied and fulfilling life. The fact that most people don't have it in them to do this doesn't says stuff about them, not about you or the script.
- Matthew 2:14
I don’t think Jesus should be quoted in a post* reminiscent of the prayer of the Pharisee
This is every single person on earth, we are all influenced by our social ecosystems. A social ecosystem can influence families toward good or for bad. Few boomers grew up believing that they should maintain a strong community network for the express purpose of finding their child a spouse.
Christianity has always been my least favourite of the three Abrahamic religions. I thank myself (and God) that I am a follower of Muhammad the Conqueror instead of Christ the Redeemer.
I try to say some variant of this prayer every day. It's an expression of gratitude towards God for pairing my ka with the ba I have (If you'll excuse the Ancient Egyptian terms). I don't think this is a bad thing but rather, in a world with a severe paucity of gratitude for what it has, something that marks me out from people. I recommend other people to be regularly thankful of their station in life too and recognise that it isn't (after a point) our own deeds that got us here but rather the blessing of God smiling down upon us (long may it continue). Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't recognise that we are all sinners and also repent for that.
I could have been born a few hospitals over and right now would be tilling fields by hand to earn a meagre amount just enough feed myself twice a day but by grace of God I was born me, and I will always be thankful for that.
EDIT: Although you can argue just how possible it is for me (the person I am today) to have been born as an IQ 80 minimally literate farmer. Just like how a human consciousness can never be born in a C. Elegans and experience such a life (because such creatures don't have the neural architecture to support something as complex as a human conscious), I wonder just how possible it would be for the consciousness I have today to have developed in an IQ 80 person (of course the differences between me and the farmer are far far smaller than the differences between humans and nematode worms but I wonder where the cutoff is). But regardless, I should still be extremely grateful, if not for that then for the fact that I got to experience reality at all because just the right sperm combined with just the right egg.
Either the God of Abraham is real, in which case your aesthetic preferences among the various cults claiming to be His true Faith are irrelevant compared to your considered impression of thier relative accuracy, or He is not, in which case you should not be thanking Him for anything, or yourself for getting involved in one of said false religions.
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