I have always been a loner of sorts, so I do not really mind the lockdown and social restrictions that governments have instituted under the auspices of a “global pandemic” which is not really deadly or dangerous to those who are not already on death’s door or extremely unhealthy, but I do feel bad for the high-school students and young adults as well as kids who are being harmed by those who are supposed to protect them. We have been living in a reality pushing hypochondria and social isolation to a degree which is unhealthy for over a year now, and if I had to guess this will continue for at least one to three more years. That is a substantial and unhealthy amount of time for the average person to be worried about going out to eat, hanging out with friends, or visiting old relatives, and it will have cascading psychological effects that will stack on top of each other exponentially as time goes on. I have written about the business impact of these lockdowns and this top-down paranoia, but this essay is specifically related to the social and interpersonal impact that this is having. Once again, I repeat that this is not something that really bothers me on a personal level, since I have kept to myself and done my own thing for as long as I can remember, but it does bother me when I see how it is abusing and warping people around me.
Most people
operate in a reactive manner, driven by cues and external impulses. These cues
and external impulses cause them to find friends, find employment, find love,
and find some semblance of routine which allows them some semblance of a happy
life. We have shut off those cues and external impulses for the last year. We
have made kids think wearing a face mask and staying distant from friends while
constantly washing their hands and being paranoid germophobes is normal. There
are millions of kids who have been afraid to visit grandma and grandpa for the
last year. The carefree innocence and risk-taking that is integral to
adolescence and allows for discovery and learning cause-and-effect have been
robbed from these kids. These kids have been psyopped by their government, by
their teachers, and worst of all, by their parents. This abuse is not ending
soon, but even if it ended today, the damages are done. The friendships that
would have been made but weren’t made will now never be made. The lonely boy or
girl who would have found a friend or mentor who could have given them hope or
care is stuck being a lonely boy or girl. Oh what a sin it is to rob a child of
something they can’t get back, to abuse the responsibility of the older
generation, and those with power as well as the parents who put up with this
insanity have sinned greatly.
College is
the time where women can best find quality husbands. Those women who were
college-aged during this pandemic have been robbed and abused. These women
don’t know it yet, but soon they will be older and their options will be
greatly reduced. The men their age will not be looking at them as potential
wife material, they will be looking at women who are younger. A woman has four
to six years where she is both legal aged and at the peak of her attractiveness,
at least one year of those four to six years has been robbed from an entire
generation of women. For men with a chip on their shoulder, this fact is funny,
but it is really tragic and sad. Of course, the consequences of this theft will
not be seen for a few years, but eventually they will be seen.
For men,
the job market was already bad, but it has been made increasingly worse. This
has social impacts beyond earning power, as a man’s worth is linked to his
ability to provide as well as his status in society, and all the college
graduates that are graduating now are either unable to find employment because
of the screwed-up locked-down economy, or getting work from home jobs that will
not allow them to form solid connections or roots in a manner which is
conducive for job stability or career opportunities. The work reality for men
joining the workforce is that of a contract worker who will be unable to get
ahead, make friendships, or form any relationships which will ensure quality
work conditions long term. Young adult men are being pushed into a servant
caste that has the servant status attached to it. What sort of women will be
attracted to these servants? Not quality women, not attractive women, not women
who are valuable, but rather low quality unattractive trashy women. Once again,
this is something that is going to happen because (not entirely, but partly) of
the lockdowns, and once again, this will not really be recognized or identified
until a few years have passed and it is too late to change anything about it.
Most
pernicious of all the lockdown’s negative social effects is how it is driving
the addiction to screens and hollow soulless scrolling as a replacement for
social communion. In lieu of bars, in lieu of churches, in lieu of concerts and
visits and parties, young humans have only one option to entertain themselves.
Their option is a synthetic, pornographic, digital facsimile of socialization.
Once again, I am not personally harmed by this as I am a master of this domain
and benefit from this, but I feel sick when I think about how this is hurting
normal young people. I have learned how to use this environment to my advantage
while still getting fresh air and making conscious choices to exercise and see
nature on a regular basis, but most young people will simply become addicted to
consuming a digital version of a drug which dulls their loneliness, distracts
them from their despair, and steals the time they should be spending making
real friendships and finding husbands or wives in the real world. Tech
companies are the future, the psychic economy is ascendant as the physical
economy rots, but all of this happening in such a rapid manner that it is
distasteful and will cause more dysfunction and pain and suffering than is
needed. Once again, the effects of this generation becoming swallowed whole and
dominated by the digital are exponential in nature and will only be understood
by most in a few years, but they have already started.
This
lockdown will most likely end in the near future, not completely but enough
that a poor man’s version of pre-lockdown can return, but the psychological and
social effects will not end. These psychological and social effects are just
beginning and will be disastrous and dysfunctional when they begin to bloom. Once
again, this is all the fault of the older generations. I don’t really know if
there has been a more wicked generation on earth than baby boomers. These
people have screwed over their children and grandchildren financially and now
they are doing it psychologically and developmentally. These people are
creating monsters from their abuses, and these monsters will create even worse
monsters.
We are in
the dying gasps of everything normal. As outlined in countless other essays,
the psychic economy has become untethered from the physical economy and now
become dominant over it. Our societies are not structured in a manner which is
compatible with this change, as evidenced by how deranged boomers and their
children are, how badly they have screwed over their descendants, and how
completely lacking in wisdom or grace they seem to be. On a global level, it is
like those tasked with running an orphanage have been getting drunk and doing
drugs while teaching the children in the orphanage some dysfunctional, deranged,
sadistic version of reality.
The kids
are not OK, the young adults are not OK, the men and women are not OK. The
economy is not OK. The housing and job markets are not OK. The governments are
not OK. The future is not OK. But it is all OK, as all of this is part of some
process which was unavoidable. Those before us had a hundred or so years of
partying and booming and irresponsible bliss, so perhaps we need one thousand
years of pain, horror, despair, disorder, distress, and confusion to balance
things out. Personally, I would rather be in the group I’m in, the group is
that is going to be punished for the abuses and sins of their fathers and
mothers, than in the group of sinners who abused and sinned as much as they
could. I do not feel any pride or admiration for my generation, or the
generation that is coming after me, but I do not feel the same disdain or shame
or loathing like I do for the baby boomers and their children.
Quite a few third-world countries haven't had this negative psychological effect on the young ones. They have gone on being social as normal.
ReplyDelete