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This society is negligent of the very real human necessity of physical contact between people. The contact need not necessarily be sexual, although sexual release is also necessary after puberty starts. Kids need physical affection from their parents and relatives up until puberty, then they naturally pull away from their parents and family and look for affection from their peers. Youthful exploration is a normal behavior, but it is frowned upon because society represses it.
Is prostitution the way to go? Perhaps as a band-aid solution for those multitudes who are left behind, “priced out of the sexual market.” However, it is only another form of monetary-backed exchange of human labor, and how many people truly enjoy their jobs? Alienation and ennui will still flourish, and society will continue as today, with low birth rates, broken families, and bleak, despondent human spirits.
The problem with emotional and spiritual poverty is that the effects of these reverberate throughout society. Children are taught that “willpower” is useless, that personal responsibility, self-reflection and intelligent decisions are not necessary. Children nag, cry and whine to get what they want — sweets, toys, and more junk food. Ethics and virtues are worthless; why work hard when the TV says you, too, could be rich, beautiful and successful without breaking a sweat? The following Fight Club quote seems appropriate:
“God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t…”
We have been emptied, hollowed out and carved up inside by this materialistic world that is ultimately unsustainable but believes it is immortal, just like every collapsed civilization before it. We fill the vast void in ourselves with things — material possessions that we see on TV and billboards and everywhere with flashing signs — so that we don’t feel so lonely, so miserable, and so unhappy. The message is simple: buy this, and you’ll be happy. Perhaps it does for a time, but then the gas tank goes empty, and you have to fill it up again.
The solution is not easy or short-term. But if it were really that easy to exercise willpower, 64.5% of US adults would not be either overweight or obese.
This lifestyle modern westerners lead is only really possible because of the exaggerated and incredible affluence. No society on earth has ever had such an unbroken run of peace and prosperity as America with the brief exception of under the Roman republic and empire — and they had their occasional barbarian invasions. The roaring 20s, the revolutionary 60s, and the changes that have happened since then brought different behaviors for both men and women.
The modern world is a giant advertisement billboard, one long commercial. You’re watching TV and seeing all the gorgeous people, all their glamorous lifestyles, and all these expensive extravagances. Then you look back to your own life, asking, “Why don’t I have that?” while the TV whispers in your ear, “You cannnnn…” Want? Take! Buy it on credit. Who cares about the consequences?
We are living in an age of post-modernism characterized by the following. The worship of the self. The glorification of the pleasure principle. Narcissism and ego stroking. Individualism. Inability to sacrifice personal happiness for the happiness of others or the greater good. This does not just happen in romantic relationships, marriages and families. This happens everywhere, from schools to universities, from corporations to governments. It’s endemic.
We must exercise personal responsibility. We women need to take responsibilities for ourselves, too, especially with respect to our feelings. One can control emotions, a lesson taught to boys from a young age and seldom offered to girls.
Many people are acting like small children when it comes to duty, work ethic, respect, and care — in other words, many of us are not doing it. This is a cultural problem, a product of postmodernism. Feminism started in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and women still felt that sense of duty up until the boomer generation.
In a sense, for modern Americans, romantic love is just childish infatuation. That rush inevitably cools off, and we have to keep looking for the next rush. We are armed with the mistaken belief that when we as individuals are pursuing what we want, we can do no wrong. And we’re surprised that we don’t get what we want all the time.
This is a stage people in the past grew out of, because they had to. These days people can stay in perpetual adolescence, partying their whole lives and minimizing duty, work, and responsibility. Subsidized by others, like their parents or the government, they live for the pleasure of the moment. It’s telling that there is no linguistic equivalent of the “mid-life crisis” in other cultures. People idealize childhood and strive to live like children. Who doesn’t want to go back to their carefree childhoods?
And children are slaves to their instincts, their screaming id.
Game is just another symptom of the childish materialism and pleasure-seeking culture. The revelry that the pick-up artist seek to make, the burning in the loins, quickening heartbeats and fleeting feel-good sex sessions — they are more odes to the worship of the self.
It’s a conscious choice. Solid character is forged through hard work, sweat, toil, learning, difficult situations, pain and suffering. Not through “I need to get hot for this guy” and “I need more sweets.” Which do most people choose? Being a person of integrity and character is a choice one can make.
Reality is whatever people perceive it to be. Everyone lies, everyone manipulates, everyone plays silly little games… and everyone justifies it. But the world is not black and white, and if we can admit our faults and flaws and try to improve, then we’re choosing a path toward building character.