Men in the city live alone. New statistics show troubling signs that men (and women) are more isolated than ever, a trend almost a century in the making and coinciding with the rise of big cities. Dating, family formation, close friends, community gatherings, church congregations and neighborhood block parties are few and far between. City dwellers are increasingly living alone and prospects for human connection grow dimmer with each passing decade. Isolation is unhealthy for most people, men and women, young and old folks alike because it creates a psychical vacuum out of which all manner of mania becomes possible. This time however, loneliness is breeding a red pill awakening and stiffening resistance to the plague of modern decay.
Super networks demand rigid compliance with soulless algorithms to gain attention or recognition.
The explosion of isolation in the 21st century is somewhat mystifying. Urbanization has brought populations closer together, the internet wired global networks that rendered communication instant, frictionless and international, open borders and remote work has created more global travel and cross-cultural mixing not less. Many predicted that globalization would eliminate national borders and transform disconnected locals into Davos Men. Similarly, Match and Tinder traded on hopium that algorithms would cut through real-world impediments like geographic remoteness, crippling shyness, and circumvent confusing social miss cues to help members find love. Unfortunately, we know You’ve Got Mail was just a Romcom fantasy.
Hyper-connectivity has had the opposite effect. In a sense, urbanization, online communities, and the laptop class has entrenched young people, working professionals, and even aging baby boomers into ever more self-segregating silos. The internet in many respects invented a thousand new barriers to separate human beings, dividing and subdividing them into compartmentalized echo chambers on proliferating niche platforms. At the same time, online oligopolies have funneled the masses through a few super networks (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram etc.) that demand rigid compliance with soulless algorithms to gain attention or recognition in the hopes of building online community if they are lucky. The emotional or spiritual substance of human relationships has been hollowed out as a result.
Digital Disillusionment
While there are numerous causes of modern despair (as discussed in this series) beyond online atomization, the internet is a mirror, a lens into the disturbed psyche of the disoriented masses. A century ago, writers, thinkers and philosophers feared an “uprush of collective forces” in response to disaggregated individuals. The problem as some viewed it, was the collapse of Christianity’s “transcendent authority.” All successful cultures are held together by shared beliefs and customs that promote human kinship usually rooted in family, community, and spiritualism. Folks from more traditional societies tend to be happier because of strong human bonds.
The internet is a mirror, a lens into the disturbed psyche of the disoriented masses.
For Western society in particular atomic loneliness or hyper-separation from human bonds has accompanied rapid modernity. Men no longer have exclusive groups, clubs, schools, “rites of initiation” and even sports are under siege too. Men seeking refuge have been pushed into siloed groups on the internet where they have coalesced in the Manosphere and adjacent spaces like Crypto. Inside these digital fight clubs the germ of revolt against bureaucracy, wokism, and atomic loneliness is blooming. Revolt is the early phase of a much bigger transformation in the psyches of young men.
Red pilling the masses is a glue stick binding lost, disaggregated men to its cause.
Red pilling the masses is more than an uprising, it is an an adhesive, a glue stick binding lost, disaggregated men (and some women) to its cause. The recognition that society is broken, that people are physically, emotionally, and spiritually enfeebled, and that the world is run by a shady Gerontocracy is spreading. The psychical vacuum is being filled with traditional values, new methodologies, and unfiltered truth bombs. A social reevaluation is emergent, which presages a cultural, monetary, and political revolution. A drastic shift in a new direction is imminent.
Degens and Dragons
Finding your way through the darkness is precarious. The path is littered with minefields of degens, false Gods, and black pills. There is always the risk of becoming what you hate. Men in the city are descending into the cavernous underbelly of the hero’s journey, plunging into the gloomy depths before ascending back to the summit; one step forward, two steps backward and so forth. Fortunately, mass awakenings tend to fade the FUD like morning fog in a beach town and yet there is grave danger in disillusionment.
Lonely, fatherless, sexless, and demoralized men are desperate for salvation.
The dragons within sexless men are angry, frustrated, and explosive. Times of turbulence often bring forth cultish parent-child relationships between phony leaders and vulnerable men (read more here). Fatherless, lonely, sexless, and demoralized men are desperate for salvation. As the Manosphere grows, as dissent and disclosure unravel the Gerontocracy, and Beta-Tyrants fall, mass awakening could slide into anarchy. A reactive fanaticism (something akin to Wokism, Antifa) could derail the awakening process. To hedge against such a development, men in the city need to come together.
Unity around a new ethos is key. Men in the city whether red pillers, Bitcoiners, or Neo-Alphas must streamline their networks into organized communities. Atomic loneliness cannot be cured with Twitter spaces, Reddit forums, and Patreon groups alone. A spiritual resuscitation grounded in ancient archetypes, a rebalanced masculine and feminine, new methodologies and monetary systems, must harmonize into a reimagined masculinity. A Neo-Masculine movement can scale if it rescues vulnerable men and disillusioned women from
atomic loneliness and pulls them back together.
The Manosphere is Adaptation
Men are deserting the legacy system. Over ten years ago the political scientist Charles Murray wrote a book called Coming Apart about the fraying of America’s social fabric. Murray believed that civic institutions (family, church, community) and a monolithic cultural ethos (industry, honesty, marriage, religiosity) that once unified Americans had completely broken down. A stark divide emerged between so-called “elites” and the masses they ruled – what he called Fishtown versus Belmont – a cleavage so sharp it threatened to dissolve the nation. What he could not have imagined is that men would split off from a crumbling social order as well.
Men need a mass movement to overcome their ills.
The seismic shocks men are confronting demand adaption. Jordan Peterson has challenged young men to adapt to social changes, urging them to stop complaining and start improving. Peterson’s glib prescription misses the point. The crisis men face parallel society's inner rot, both face existential breakdown. For men to overcome their ills does not require self-improvement, or reattraction of females, but rather a mass movement. “A generation of men raised by women” does not need women, they need each other, and importantly, they need a movement to fight back.
The Manosphere is the adaption. A mass movement has begun, and its strength is growing as modern society spins out-of-control. Rather than comply and conform to the rules of a rigged game that sets them up for failure, men must eject. The call to action for men is not how to improve a hopelessly corrupt and moribund social order but to revolt against it. Now is the time to create new communities, to build new movements; now is the time for men to come together, and that process has begun.
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