this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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I would build community with you and we would learn from each others differences. That's the kind of world I want and think we can still have.
I use a similar line a lot trying to explain to people why we're hardwired to reach out to each other and build communities, and why it's being stifled by modern culture of algorithm-fed isolation and part of why everyone is so, so miserable.
I am worried about a lot of things we're not looking at that are going to bite us soon though. The lack of relationships, falling rates of sex, the falling birthrates are massively worrying, not because I think we need to "retvrn to tradition" or anything with white families cranking out white babies like so many on the right have co-opted the issue about, but rather... we're not loving each other anymore. We are all scared of each to the degree that we're even resisting our desires to connect and have emotions and intimacy, and that's a huge red flag for our society that isn't getting enough attention.
A protestor in Minnesota said it and I repeat it: Democrats won't save you. Republicans won't save you. Nobody is coming. Only your neighbor can save you.
I just add the fact that we're all neighbors, and I want people to learn to be social and confident in themselves and their values again, but it's getting very hard with these exploitative tools in the digital age feeding people's worst insecurities.
Well thank you stranger-friend, that's a kind thing to say, and I feel the same way.
I agree, and I think the issue is very complex, but could be significantly reduced by just teaching boys what healthy masculinity is. Buut as with all things, capitalism gets in the way - who will teach these boys anything if their parents (and other relatives) are working all the time? Who will be their role models when the worst, most misogynistic behavior is so often rewarded and glorified?
I focus on masculinity specifically because, while it's largely true that everyone is afraid of each other, the fears of feminine people are generally more founded in the actual danger presented by men, while the fears of men are often artificial. (Not always though, like the whole parental custody controversy, but often.) Reduce those artificial fears, and hopefully men would behave in less of a manner which culminates in actual danger, ie no incel rage if you realize you really don't need to be an incel if you're just... a decent person.
Birth rates, I am not sure what to think, in all honesty. Aging populations are bad for the obvious reason of, there won't be enough young people to take care of all the elderly, at least not to the extent which they deserve. But the resulting lower global resource use isn't a terrible thing, maybe even a vital thing as we transition to more sustainable systems capable of supporting more life. Maybe it's just humanity returning to levels of population which the earth is actually capable of sustaining, which we deviated from only as a result of the aberration that is the industrial revolution? I genuinely don't know though, I'm not saying I believe that, I'm just thinking out loud here.
Bringing people back to love and connectivity is one reason why I'm a major advocate for psychedelic drugs. They dissolve social norms and make you question your conditioning - at least, I would say, if you're listening to them. They still need to be reinforced by a strong, loving, human culture; they're not a silver bullet. They had LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin available for purchase on Epstein's island ffs, and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk have both tripped. So psychedelics alone aren't THE ANSWER, but I do think they can be a major aid in the fight to return humanity to western cultures. ~~But microdosing doesn't count lol~~
About birth rates, I just know my perspective, logistics is my thing, so I have a finger on the pulse of what makes the world function the way it is.
We could absolutely do with less resource consumption, but we didn't get to this level overnight, so if we fell suddenly back to pre-industrial population levels any faster than rates are going now, it will be catastrophic, and then we have all the same issues over again. When there aren't enough young people to man the services and production sectors, people go to the grocery store and don't have eggs and bread suddenly, or they become prohibitively expensive, and then we have worried populations doing the same thing they did when the 2024 elections rolled around and the price of eggs was $15 bucks for a dozen, and people clenched up and voted for the loud mouth promising "radical change" over the status quo.
We will likely have a preview of how bad it can get with South Korea, they've passed a point of no return and to recover population levels to a functional level they would have to have every capable woman in the country have something like five kids, and all those kids would have to have five kids. And they're currently overrun with the same social strain we have here between genders, again mostly manufactured by toxic media influencers as you touched on.
I have some hope for the US as we seem to be broadly finally rejecting some of the male insecurity grifters finally, and the up-and-coming generation seems to be more critical of these entities and their followings.
But that's just one of many issues that seem to be intersecting in the medium-term future that we will have to navigate. Climate change, migrations, water access, economic strain on supply chains, surveillance states and the coming age of techno-feudalism that it doesn't look like we're going to avoid.