Missed Youth

         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.