Systemic Collapse

Modern technological progress
masks societal decay.
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Systemic Collapse

Editor's note: this was written when I was a teenager and it has been edited for stylistic changes from the original post, however the content remains mostly the same.

A respectable job, a home, and a family, was once attainable by a man by the time he reached his early twenties. The same man today likely has none of those, as a casualty of a long societal decline. The collapse of this Ponzi scheme known as society is inevitable.

History tended towards Malthusian societies, with limited resources. There were higher values that used to be culturally instilled, such as character and integrity. A man could afford not only to support himself but also a family by simply by having a work ethic, and marry young without the risks that come with marrying later. There was an implied social contract which was more or less kept, and more equitable without the politicized power struggle between both sexes. The introduction of the birth control pill was far more disastrous than the atomic bomb, since it led to the destruction of not only households but the bonds that kept them together.

The disintegration of the family unit is the key of this social breakdown. Promiscuity is the new standard, and it creates a new market which was previously suppressed: the sexual marketplace. This marketplace is more inequitable than the most dysfunctional third world countries. The old law and order does not apply in this marketplace, as institutions such as community and marriage are obsolete. Communities kept people together and ostracized anti-social behavior to maintain cohesion. Individuals without these communal bonds come apart, and the legal industry thrives on conflict. The sexual act itself is a poor simulacrum of the peak social experience.

The industrial society thrives upon depletion of resources. As the literal underworld is exhaustively mined out, so are individuals exhausted of love, or no love at all. The transiently populated cities of today appear in terms of proximity in dating profiles, where talented people go to meet but never settle, a dead end for human capital.

The systemic collapse shows in the negligence of technological infrastructure as the first world descends into the third world. Electrical grids, irrigation systems, high technology, the niceties of technological civilization will struggle to remain operational. The breakdown will advance into the later stages of the devaluation of currency, dissolution of government, and small-scale conflicts. In the post-civil world, atomized individuals will be most vulnerable, and there will be plenty of them.

America has passed its golden age of the late-20th century, and has no worthwhile future. Where do we go from here?