antonomon

Wow, great suggestion. I will check it.

It feels like things are a bit primed for something like that, in a way. Although it could easily not and just continue indefinitely if the public is pacified completely. Still, I think if this drip drip drip of a decline continues, then I think we might start seeing some weird fascination with war as an “outlet." A lot of fine de siecle 20th century writers talked about this same thing with regards to mass industrial society, as if they wanted WWI. When Wittgenstein was sent to the front, his response was basically, “I really needed that,” as if it was some kind of cleanse. People are built for narratives, they derive meaning from them, and a drift cannot persist indefinitely. Amid the collapse of traditional meta-narratives that once gave meaning, there are today many competing ones, none of which are truly for the now. It feels like we need a new way to live otherwise we will exhaust ourselves.

Less friends, relationships on the decline, delayed adulthood, trust at an all-time low, and many diseases of despair. The prognosis is not great.

I agree with you, the term does tend to imply that. However, I think it has less to do with that, and more to do with structural underemployment among people who are very educated which creates resentment.

A historian claims a unique theory called elite overproduction can predict social unrest. Macrohistorian Peter Turchin argues that it allowed for nihilism in Czarist Russia and eventually the end of the regime. In America, it's still unclear.