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Comment by thsksbd | Hacker News Reader

Labor participation numbers are very interesting. However I think they point to a deeper malaise:

There is a segment of society that has checked out. They wont form families. They wont realize themselves. They wont create bonds of love with others.

They survive living off the good will parents, grandparents or the state. Mind you, I consider these people are victims.

On the other hand, people who are trying to form families, form bonds, find it much harder to afford basic things their parents could afford despite selling double the amount of hours to the labor market than their families did two, or three generations ago.

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Victims?! Really?

The malaise is deeply relatable, and we ignore the warning signs constantly.

Not everybody believes the same things and it's about damn time the outliers stood up and asserted their will.

The majority cannot consume and suck the life out of competing beliefs forever.

The hubris in the hive mind attitudes and the complete homogenity of consciousness in popular culture, is lethally bad for social cohesion.

It is mandatory to have private beliefs supported and related online. These excluding technological policies sold to the public on dogwhistle references to domestic terrorism has to end.

Obviously no-one is going to do it, there's too much wealth to secure and good times to be milked. The majority has let these men down and we call them victims, as if that helps broken morale and isolated truths....

A guy getting playing video games or getting high off his mom's pension all day is not a valiant outlier asserting his independence.

He's a mooch, parasitical to his parents and contributing nothing to the human experience.

He's also a victim because, partially, he's fallen into this state of despair because society's attitude towards checking out has become too lenient and soft to keep most these boys (and it is mostly boys) in line.

In fact, he's not even courageously stepping out of the head. No one judges him, no one really cares what he does.

A beatnik in the fifties might haves been an interesting person to talk to. Today, he's just a bum.

>(and it is mostly boys)

I'd really like to see on what basis you're writing this when many other things point to either the opposite or the numbers being equal.

>because society's attitude towards checking out has become too lenient and soft to keep most these boys

Society has been actively shaming and demonizing men for decades now, trying to get them to accept working through what feels like an untraversable valley. A valley which was in many ways easier to traverse before. Society took away the incentives, and now tries to replace it with punishments. What do you propose that won't cause severe animosity in a group historically known to destroy societies when pushed to the edge?

The extremes aside, this is the reality behind most 'boys' checking out. Men are biologically wired to try and excel if they see opportunities. They aren't seeing them anymore.

"Society has been actively shaming and demonizing men for decades now, trying to get them to accept working through what feels like an untraversable valley"

But I agree with you! I empathize with these boys who have laid their lives to waste. As I mentioned, I don't (entirely) blame them for growing up in a society where manly nature is scorned and called toxic.

"Mostly boys[...] "

Look at stats on higher education. The stats that show girls equalling boys are partially by more girls signing up, but it's also explained by boys' enrollments collapsing.

I have three kids, two girls and a boy. Im worried sick for them. Will my girls find a quality [1] husband (much harder today than before)? Will my boy fall into the traps newly laid out for him?

[1] I don't mean fancy degrees. The man could be a moron as long as he's caring, hard working, honorable and trustworthy. But a smart ass who watches porn and plays video games all day? Hard pass.

On the one hand I agree, bumming off your parents/state/etc is mooching and shouldn't be applauded or tolerated.

On the other hand, so much work that does occur these days is incredibly frivolous and debatable if it adds social value at all. Let's take Video games for example. It is now a larger industry than movie or music combined. And the stereotypical drop-out is the "lives in parents basement playing video games" dude. But if that is a waste of life and mooching, shouldn't we also turn our eyes to the people/companies making these games? If playing game is a waste of life, what does that say about those making them? But these people are never spoken about in such terms.

The same logic can apply to music industry, movie industry, sports industry, tourism industry, etc.

Thats why I really don't blame the "moocher", except for the damage they do to their families. Am I any better than a guy who smokes out or plays video games all day? No! We're not that different, but except I gave my parents three grand kids to play with, and they're not so worried about my financial will being when they die.

That's why i was so impressed by the Flappy Bird creator. When he realized how destructive his game was, he walked away from it.

"parasitical to his parents and contributing nothing to the human experience."

This is nasty language however you put it and you're certainly talking in a way that makes me think that you DO think you are "better" than this person. But you should be careful, I know plenty of "achieving people" who gave their parents or society this or that and ended up with kids with troubles who under your definition "live as parasitical mooches contributing nothing to the human experience".

Would you like people casting those kind of comments at your own kids in future when they don't know a thing about the struggles they may have been through? Because I'm sorry but claiming you empathise with someone and then calling them a "parasitical mooch" out the other side of your mouth makes me think you don't truly empathise with them at all.

Calling a spade a spade does not mean I don't empathize with them. It can also mean Ive walked along their path.

Trust me, I am acutely aware of what they are, how and why they have fallen and the despair they feel. Its a despair of worthlessness which is tragic because we are all images of the Devine and therefore infinitely precious.

Even today, I walk along their footsteps but for the grace of God.

But we get nowhere pussyfooting with vocabulary.

Ah yes of course, describing people as parasites has a long history of leading to positive social change/movements.

I can honestly only assume you are trolling me at this point if you're bouncing between calling people "Devine" (do you mean "Divine"?) and parasites and thinking you have anything worthwhile to say.

I didn't call them Divine, I said they are made in the image of the Divine. And yes, I misspelled.

Despite our constitution, we can still collapse into ruin. Some of us become cruel. Some of is slothful. Sone of us keep it together.

For those of us prone to slothfulness, the end game is becoming parasitical (ie eating off of the work of others without helping out).

Its not that hard to see that a person may be infinitely valuable and still be a problem. Its the basis of our Western jurisprudence!

Yeah fine, there's idiots everywhere. But my point still stands. Surface levels judgements don't uncover why he's doing what he's doing.

You don't fall into despair, despair doesnt make you a victim, you choose to despair. Kiekergaard's Sickness unto death, describes it well enough for your average pot smoker.

Your incredibly white-bread judgements, I should have seen coming!

All the more reason to continue to diverge paths. You simply don't have a clue what is going on with 'the youth'.

I guess that old science idea is still true, progress happens one generation at a time.

The irony of the deepest survelliance the world has ever seen and people are no wiser.

I'll be honest, I can't figure out if you're arguing for objectivism or if you're a bleeding heart liberal justifying that a drug addict mooching off everyone is just a misunderstood existentialist philosopher.

I'm Catholic. I believe I'm responsible for every ill in the world through my most grievous sinning, in what I have done and what I have failed to do. So its my fault.

More seriously, I think we agree? Fundamentally, we have a society that is (was) too rich and therefore too soft making a whole cohort of (mostly white [1]) boys into Peter Pans.

You'll have to explain me the white bread comment though.

[1] Inner urban cities aren't exactly peachy places to grow up in. For all their problems, inner city youths have being brought up to be a helpless wimp isn't one of them.

I know you're Catholic, it is, um, obvious from the content and structure of your comments, and I don't aim for my beliefs to be unknown either.

I need to make absolutely clear and dig it into your heart (if necessary), is that the home-grown meanings inside your white boy's mind, are novel, worthwhile and capable of change.

There is something going on, and not only is that truth an easy motivator/harness, but the top down image that these boys are just hippes, bums and losers, is a missed opportunity (to say the least).

White bread, a colloquial term for something excessively plain/uninteresting/stale/ect.

You're not wrong about the Peter Pans, ect... I'd want to see our Fathers find and leverage the growing meaning in our sons.

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