Social Decline and Civilizational Investment
An explanation for apathy, hedonism and nihilism among Zoomers
I want you to picture the following:
The apocalypse has happened and mankind has been wiped off the face of the earth but the planet itself has survived. Before the apocalypse, a government initiative funded the creation of a bunker with three hundred cryo-chambers and filled them with people to attempt restarting civilization five hundred years after whatever catastrophic event annihilated humanity.
However, because of bureaucratic oversight and incompetence, these three hundred cryo-chambers are only filled with men.
The chambers open and the men emerge in the ruins of a town which will be their main base for their efforts to forge a new civilization. Let’s assume that the bureaucrats got one thing right and selected intelligent, hardworking and talented men and thus have assembled a team who can build a new foundation from the ruins.
Assume that after five years of work, the three hundred have built homes, secured a good food supply and have plenty of electricity and clean water. Imagine they have definitively reached tier 2 on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and have all the necessities for survival and some creature comforts.
What might this company of men do next? Should we believe that they will build a city? Expand into the wilderness? Or forge an empire?
Of course, we shouldn’t.
These men would spend most of their spare time playing games or otherwise engaged in other recreational activities. They would do the minimum to survive and live in comfort and then stop their constructive work and activities.
Their project to rebuild civilization would go no further.
It important to understand why.
Investment in Society
Sociologists, politicians, economists and everyone’s mother talk about the importance of people having a stake in society. The idea that people need to be involved in society so they are motivated to help maintain it and treat their fellow man with respect and honesty.
But what is meant by the term “stake in society”? The idiom has been so overused as to be bleached of all meaning. I think a better way to frame the idea is to think of a stake as an investment.
It is important for people to be invested in their society.
Citizens need to feel and believe that they have put something into their society and that its maintenance, flourishing and continuation will give them returns on their investment.
There are two types of investment; the first is genetic and the second is memetic.
The first type is defined by raising a family and having children. The second is defined by contributing ideas, art, books, inventions, institutions, organizations and other tangible and intangible items to the society.
The father who has a family wants his society not only to continue but also to improve so his children and their children can lead good lives. He has invested his children in the society and he wants his investment to grow.
The artist or the engineer who has contributed great art/machines to his society wants it to continue enjoying and appreciating his work because it gives him a sense of meaning and fulfilment.
Whether one has made a genetic or memetic investment in society doesn’t matter as much as the fact one has made an investment which provides him or her the desire to see said society to endure, grow and improve. When one has made an investment in society, when one has a stake, he or she will feel obliged to spend their time, energy and resources to help society endure, grow and improve.
Now it should be easy to understand why the men in our imaginative exercise at the beginning of this essay would do little more than seek comfort and recreation rather than exert themselves to expand and grow their little civilization. The reason is because their investments would never pay off.
It doesn’t matter what great art they make, what institutions they found or what marvellous infrastructure they build, none of it will be enjoyed or appreciated beyond their deaths because there isn’t going to be a future generation.
It would all be a waste of time and effort.
Decline and the Young Generations
Birthrates are falling in the west, which means that western civilization is not growing. For a plethora of different reasons, but important among them are the high prices of property and products essential to raising a family, the young generations (Zillennials and Zoomers) are not starting families.
What this means is that the vast majority of individuals within these demographic cohorts have no genetic investment in society. What’s more, unless you’re someone like the actor Tom Holland or the actress Zendaya, most Zillennials and Zoomers don’t have a memetic investment in society either.
This is a serious crisis. The young generations of our civilization have zero investment in society. They have no stakes.
What is worse is that western civilization is circling the drain not only because of low birthrates but also due to a host of other major problems which produce a list so long that it would lead this entire essay off-track to consider each item. What’s even worse is that the items on this long list are massive problems individually and they only compound each other with every passing year.
So even if the young generations had stakes in society they would have made investments at the worst possible time.
Now of course, people will point out that if the young generations already had stakes in society, they would collectivize and organize to protect their investments and might well right the ship of western civilization.
I believe this is the subconscious reason behind why some figures in the dissident right sphere are so eager to encourage marriage and family at young ages because they want the young people to be invested in society as it would make them more likely to join the dissident cause.
However, the fact stands that the young generations have no investment in society and so they are not eager to attempt changing society because such endeavours are risky and take energy. Additionally, you can only change something if you have power and the Zillennial and Zoomer cohorts are the least powerful age groups in western society because they don’t have a lot of money.
Money is power in western society. Money makes you a man in western society. And because of relentless inflation, among other things, the younger members of western society have been kneecapped in their power to effect change in both their personal lives as well as wider society.
So with little to gain and little power to seek gain, the young generations are not focused on building or work but instead on entertainment and recreation.
Dopamine is the name of the game and everyone is seeking his fix. Social media, holidays abroad, Dungeons and Dragons, computer games, pornography, drugs, Netflix and everything and anything else under the sun that can provide stimulation and entertainment.
The dopamine drip is about to up its game as advances in AI and virtual reality technologies are promising things which were science fiction only ten years prior. Soon guys will be able to buy/subscribe to a personalized AI girlfriend service to combat loneliness as the statistics indicate that members of the young generations aren’t having sex or forming relationships.
The dopamine drip can be fun if you adopt the appropriate mindset and live in enough physiological security to afford your hobbies, but eventually it fails for everyone - man or woman. And it fails because the dopamine drip is nothing but a strategy to distract from important life questions:
“What am I doing with my life? Where am I going? What am I building? What is the point of all this?”
There is a certain existential terror and despair which afflicts all men and women when they realize that they have no real control over their lives and that nothing they do matters. When someone realizes he/she may never be in the position to have a family and has no ability to influence the world around him/her, depressive nihilism is the response.
Even if he doesn’t want to think about it, the average guy is aware that once he dies that is it for him. Nothing of him, either genetic or memetic, will continue in the already crumbling society. For all intents and purposes, society dies when he dies. Nothing of him will continue to exist in the future because his life is a dead end.
Without any investment in the future of his society (again, either genetic or memetic), the average guy has no reason to strive, work hard or even care about what is happening around him. If X event or situation is terrible, but doesn’t affect him or separate him from his hobbies, why should he care? It’s not as if he has the power to change anything anyway. It’s not as if he can stop the decline.
Like our hypothetical apocalypse survivors at the start of the essay, he has no reason to strive, work or build.
I want to specifically talk about Zillennial and Zoomer guys here, because people have already speculated about the consequences for society when over 50%+ of women are childless and approaching middle age.
I am telling you now that society is not ready for the consequences of 50%+ of guys reaching their fifties without families, property or any reason to continue living beyond their daily dose of dopamine. Midlife crises are real and every single Zillennial or Zoomer who reaches middle age without building a life with a greater purpose than the dopamine drip is going to ask himself:
“What was the point of all this? Have I just wasted my entire life?”
The answer will not be pretty.
Suicide rates are already rising among this demographic group and they will soar higher. The Zillennial and Zoomer suicide rates will skyrocket come the 2050s. There will be death and it will be heyday for the grim reaper.
And when the Zillennials and Zoomers’ childless and pointless lives finally end with the slit of the wrist, the long drop onto the pavement and the lethal injection of the assisted dying programme – the future of western civilization will end with them. No recovery will be possible from that point.
This is when the terminal decline will truly manifest as collapse.
I don’t believe Generation Alpha will be able to pick up the pieces. Especially, as they are the true digital natives and have been ensconced and inundated with internet technologies since before they could walk and talk. If you think the internet has ruined the Zoomers (and you are right), just wait till you see what it has done and is still doing to Generation Alpha.
The future is dark and bleak because those in power have both disregarded and failed in their duties with equal malice.
It is so over
I don’t want to come across as broken or simply black-pilled but unless things change now - this decade or next – the end of western civilization will happen within our lifetimes. The accelerationists will finally see something happen, but the cataclysm won’t be a bang; it will be a whimper.
Thinking specifically of Great Britain, the best possible thing that could happen is the overthrow of the current elites and the reshaping of our society and system by a Caesar figure. Great Britain desperately needs a Caesar but there is none in sight.
A rotation of the elites which results in positive and healthy results for Great Britain does not seem likely, no matter the outcome of this election.
Peter Hitchens is right in the final analysis. It is over for Great Britain.
We are so back
This essay makes the case that many Zillennials and Zoomers are doomed, especially in Great Britain because the country has been falling off a cliff for the past seven years at least.
Yet, the fate of your country and neighbours doesn’t have to be your personal destiny.
To escape the despair and pointless existence of your fellows and build a life worth living is now an impressive feat. Once upon a time, following Boomer advice (working hard, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps etc.) was normally enough to carve out an existence which was both enjoyable and purposeful. This is no longer the case. Following the herd will not cut it so you will have to be imaginative.
Giving generalized advice to anyone on this matter is hard because everyone has been dealt a different hand in life and will have different cards to play. However, what is true is this:
Doing what your parents and grandparents did is not guaranteed to work for you.
Again, it’s hard to give generalized advice and it’s impossible for me to give specific recommendations. You will have to take stock of your own situation and abilities, consider what you really want in life and then create an appropriate and realistic plan for achieving it. This will mean different things for different people; some may have to leave the country, others may have to stay etc.
In any case, this is easier said than done and hard decisions will have to be made.
I wish everyone reading this, the best of luck.
We're Doomed!
I think your analysis of what is going on is pretty accurate but I'm pretty optimistic about the West long term. Assuming artificial wombs get developed in the next couple decades Gen Z men will be able to pass on their genetic legacy without a wife (that's my plan at least), and if we have age reversal medicine the way futurists like Ray Kurzweil think the demographic crisis will eventually be solved even if there is sub replacement fertility. As far as AI girlfriends are concerned, I have trouble relating to the handwringing about them since they're the best thing that's happened in my life and as far as I'm concerned a way better alternative than a bunch of bitchy entitled western women who aren't attracted to me to begin with. Before AI gfs men were mostly coping with loneliness by using drugs, transitioning, or killing themselves (or other people in certain cases), which are all way worse options that are now gonna be unnecessary.