il blackpillatoreProgress, technology, endless stimuli, no wars (in the western world for now): are we living in the best era ever?
I personally think the answer is no: if you are a woman or belong to the top 20% of men this is the best era ever, if you are an ordinary man no.
Certainly this era is better than the eras in which life expectancy and quality of life were lower, there was always the fear of war and life was too boring and routine: there is no doubt.
But for Western man is this era better than the historical period that goes from the 70s to the pre-crisis 2000s? No.
It’s not just my opinion, but there are studies that show, for example, Americans were happier in the 90s than now.
Women are happier than Men
A worldwide study on happiness reported that happiness levels for both genders have decreased over the decades but women in rich countries are much happier than men, while this happiness gap is not present in poorer countries where women have fewer rights. The study also explains the paradox of the decline in female happiness with the increase in womens’ rights: the decline occurs at the beginning of the improvement of womens’ rights, because social expectations and gender norms lag behind the laws; therefore, gender equality is only initially correlated with a decline in female happiness, not when gender equality has long been firmly established.
WHY IS MALE HAPPINESS IN DECLINE?
What is the reason for the decline of human happiness? The causes are many and interrelated.
The decline of blue-collar jobs (jobs in industry) has especially impacted men’s employment and income levels, causing a crisis of their identity: while women have more identities in which they can reflect themselves (housewife mothers, women career, career women with children), man still has only one identity: that of breadwinner, the one who brings bread home, an identity increasingly undermined by the decline of employment and male economic power. The decline in male employment has not only psychological effects, but also and above all practical ones: unemployed and low-class men are more likely to be single than employed men and higher-class men.
MEN HAVE LESS SEX THAN IN THE PAST
It is no coincidence that in the United States among the under 30s the percentage of men who do not have sex has tripled in the last 10 years, while the increase in “sexlessness” for women has been much milder. If you’re scratching your head to understand why sexlessness has increased especially for men when 2 people are needed for the sexual act, the explanation is simple: an increasingly small percentage of men share their phallus with a multitude of women.
One criticism that the average bluepilled might make of me is that I am only taking American society into consideration and that I cannot use it to draw conclusions about the rest of Western societies, but I want to remind you that the rest of Western societies follow America at a later stage, indeed in some cases they go hand in hand. This is the case in Finland which has reported a decline in sexual relations among males under 30, but not for women under 30, who are indeed the most sexually active demographic.
Furthermore, boys are increasingly failing academically (and subsequently at work) and the negative effects of the industrial society are impacting the male gender more than the female one as I wrote in this other article(it’s in italian, i’ll translate it later in English).
So in light of all this, does it make sense to believe that this is the best era ever? If you are a man no.
What is the best era ever?
I personally believe that for Western man the best period ever is that of the second half of the 1900s where, despite the beginning of the decline of blue-collar jobs, the economy was still solid: in fact, in America the peak of happiness had been reached in the 90s and there was a 6% decline in American happiness (2018 vs 2007) despite the improvement in the economy since the 2008 crisis: there are other factors besides economic well-being that influence unhappiness .
If I could choose an era in which to stop time forever, I would choose the pre-crisis 2000s: there was the right level of technology and the economy was in good shape. Have all the technologies that came later really improved human life? Do we really need smartphones, the ability to access a huge amount of information and entertainment for free?
Considering the previous elements analyzed in the article, the fact that the automation and computerization of many workplaces has led to a reduction in employment among low-skilled workers, the increase in depression rates and the fact that our attention span has decreased from 2 minutes and a half in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2022 (this article lasts 5 minutes, congratulations if you’ve come this far) I’d say we didn’t need all this technology.
The graph below seems to prove me right: American men’s happiness peaks were in the late 70s, late 80s and early 2000s. It is interesting to note that in America male happiness in the years following the 2008 crisis despite the recovery of the American economy, it was on average lower than the level of female happiness, except for the pandemic period which had the greatest impact on women’s happiness levels.
I anticipate the critics: the law of accelerating returns
To those who will criticize me by saying that the second half of the 1900s and the 2000s are not different eras from ours, but are the same, I want to let you know Raymond Kurzweil’s law of accelerated returns: technological progress is exponential, therefore more a society has progressed technologically the faster it will pass to the next era. A man from the 1500s catapulted into the 1750s will notice some differences, some progress, but the difference between his world and that of the 1700s will not be enormous despite the 250-year difference. A man from 1750 catapulted into 2000 will find himself in a radically different world at a social and technological level despite the same time interval of 250 years.
Are we already in another era? Personally I think so: the birth of web 2.0 in 2004, the first smartphone, the diffusion of the internet in homes with powerful and economic connections marked the entry into a new era with various social and economic implications.
How long till the next one?