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The relationship recession is going global

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Re: The relationship recession is going global

#81
post #8

We were sold a model where having a career is the most important thing in life, at the expense of family and relationships. Because of that, the world gets richer but unhappier. Additionally, local human contact has been replaced by a world of upvotes by strangers with quirky online names. We need to work on figuring out how we can get the undeniable benefits of modern technologies without forgetting our biological n…

My suspicion is it's the financialization of everything driven by fiance capitalism and enabled by the huge twentieth century population boom.

I know that sounds edgy but explaining it.

With the population surging you could just flat out ignore the need to have children and create the next generation. So the priority then became amassing wealth. As long as the working classes were still behaving like they were living under malthusian conditions that worked. But now the working classes have caught on and are either trying to acquire capital wealth or they're trying to just hang on.

So yeah the working class knows what economic reality they are living under and acting accordingly. Having few children in order to acquire wealth and funnel it to the smaller next generation. The tell this is true is that it's happening everywhere. And the longer a place has been operating where childhood mortality is low and you can acquire financial wealth the lower the birthrate. With the caveat that some places are more culturally amenable to that.

Re: The relationship recession is going global

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty odd take on history. You know women have always worked, right? Female life pre-20th century wasn't permanent housewifeing. They often worked from home in cottage industries, ran shops, took part in family owned businesses (often running the financial side) and many other jobs. The reason there was pressure to raise a family - for both women and men - had nothing to do with gender equality. It was beca…

The pressure to produce more humans was mostly to fuel the armies that need constant supply of young people to throw into the meat grinder; at least in the past centuries in Europe

You really think people chose to have children and raised them to satisfy military requirements?

While it may be sadly true that many young people died like that, that isn't why men and women have children.

Re: The relationship recession is going global

#83
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>me? find a gal? nope siree. i simply have too many video games to play and anime to watch! this wolf rides solo. at the end of the day i simply couldnt imagine myself with a sweet little missus in my arms... honestly, i retch at the thought! id much rather hotglue my hatsune miku figurine trust me brother, the day will come when video games, anime, and surrogate friendships get boring. the copes and distractions don…

But what's the solution? It's not as if these men have willing marriageable women queueing up at their door. They have not chosen to forego marriage and family in pursuit of these pointless nihilistic hedonistic hobbies. They seek comfort in them because marriage and family are unattainable.

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Re: The relationship recession is going global

#84
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "letting". This seems to me to be the same pattern as every other new communication medium. Sure, it's more addictive now. Do you think playing whack a mole with the definition of addictive will solve that problem? I don't. I think the only way to get the outcome of "people less addicted to media and dumb ideas" is to make addiction uncool - and government can't do that. People are doing the social changes nat…

I'm not as optimistic about people learning, and addiction has never gone away. I used to be more of a libertarian about things like financial regulation, but what changed my mind was watching markets and especially things like the cryptocurrency phenomenon where you really did have deregulation. All you get is scams because people keep falling for the same nonsense over and over again. None of it is new. Ponzi schem…

I'm not saying we can fix addiction. I'm saying we shouldn't try to regulate this away, we won't have any real impact.

Re: The relationship recession is going global

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Not OP but in a nutshell, everybody who could bought an condo downtown (Toronto + Vancouver especially but this is broadly true of the country) with a home equity loan from their main property as an investment, and the loan math only works if all properties are increasing in value and the interest rate stays very close to zero. Neither are true and unless something happens Canada could have our very own 2008 financia…

Sounds great for everyone who doesn't own.

Re: The relationship recession is going global

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pressure to produce more humans was mostly to fuel the armies that need constant supply of young people to throw into the meat grinder; at least in the past centuries in Europe

You really think people chose to have children and raised them to satisfy military requirements? While it may be sadly true that many young people died like that, that isn't why men and women have children.

If you were of high class like the nobility or mercantile, you had children to continue your powerful bloodline. You also married to sign off on alliances and cooperatives. Entire wars have been waged over familial ties and successors.

If you were of low class like the peasantry, you had children to have enough hands to till the fields.

If you were of middle class somewhere in-between, you had children for both of the above each to lesser degrees.

In the modern era there's simply less and less practical reasons to have children, not to mention the costs of childcare and rearing. On the bright side, at least we have less instances of war being waged because Lord Dickus Bigus wants to pork out on a lady and screw everyone else.

Re: The relationship recession is going global

#88
post #9
post #8

We were sold a model where having a career is the most important thing in life, at the expense of family and relationships. Because of that, the world gets richer but unhappier. Additionally, local human contact has been replaced by a world of upvotes by strangers with quirky online names. We need to work on figuring out how we can get the undeniable benefits of modern technologies without forgetting our biological n…

Career and grinding is not a goal, but is needed to afford an house and money to help your parents. Apartment prices relative to income have gone greatly up. Thus, more grinding needed and some low wage occupations are priced out from the market altogether. The question is why apartment prices keep going up and can we stop it.

Human breeding impulses are infinite but there is only so much space. That is why prices keep going up. The earth is getting full.

Re: The relationship recession is going global

#89
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're not going to escape lookism either by just waving some magic wand about how if you meet someone in person they suddenly can't see your face anymore. Yeah, you probably are actually. Unless you're literally disfigured most women don't care that much about the physical appearance of men compared to other things. Men care way more about this. Finding beautiful women on the arm of a man who is old or unattractiv…

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Then you misunderstood because that isn't the case at all. We met where I live and wealth had nothing to do with it. We are both european.

Re: The relationship recession is going global

#90
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're not going to escape lookism either by just waving some magic wand about how if you meet someone in person they suddenly can't see your face anymore. Yeah, you probably are actually. Unless you're literally disfigured most women don't care that much about the physical appearance of men compared to other things. Men care way more about this. Finding beautiful women on the arm of a man who is old or unattractiv…

> Finding beautiful women on the arm of a man who is old or unattractive man is easy, if he has other attributes women like more. Only seen this with gold diggers. I’ve never seen this in any other circumstance. It’s well accepted that modern couples are mostly paired off by their looks. You’re not seeing models with average looking guys unless she’s trying to escape poverty - which means she’s not with you but with…

Yes I know about the psychology papers that you're referring to, and wealth can be one of those attributes, but there are many others and it wasn't that in this case. She certainly did not need to escape poverty.
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