Nobody Cares Anymore
And You Don't Either
In my personal exploration of social apathy and how it affects the younger generations, and civilization at-large, I’ve sort of come to understand that the modern world could care less about humanity. Frankly, it would be glad to be rid of us.
The world takes on the mindsets which people develop for it, like one big Jungian brain.
I suppose I could have seen this anywhere but Shinichi Haku restacked one of my notes with this image and it sort of clicked. It clicked that there is no gratitude, there is no reward, there is no purpose to things you do anymore. Nihilism is built into the system as a primary function.
What I’m coming to discover is that maybe the world Nietzsche diagnosed is not one through which we can ACT our way out of. He would have had no way of knowing that the Last Man could get this bad, that in some ways the Last Man is not even a product of his own desires or will but one manufactured by institutions meant to pump out hordes of them.
Nihilism, to the modern system, is a strategy, just as aristocracy was for most of time before that. Through sheer, copious amounts of nihilistic slaves, modernity would seek to de-politicize and enslave the world through meaningless units of economic abstractions, à la Cosmic Louche’s latest article. Gone is the knight, the scholar, the academic, the scientist, the king or warrior or shaman—here lies only the worker, and not the worker of someone like Junger’s perception in which the State and man work together toward a higher goal. No, far from that; the State would have you sewing $1 t-shirts in a sweatshop before thinking about giving you a genuine purpose.
So what constitutes man’s ability to find genuine purpose in this world? I would estimate that:
He needs freedom. Freedom to fuck off from society and not merely live on its fringes.
He needs gratitude. The work must be appreciated by society if/when he returns—and not even necessarily explicitly. How many inventions do we rely on that we don’t even know who invented them, yet we are thankful (should be, at least) to utilize them?
His work aligns with his instincts. Sitting in an office chair for 8 hours a day should honestly be codified as a crime against humanity, but stick a man out in nature for 12 hours a day producing something alongside his companions and it won’t even register as difficult for him.
See, man does not need peace; at least not constantly. He doesn’t need tranquility or a mind of still, crystalline water like a monk. We like having work, things to think about and worry over. It’s called having drive. But that drive has to be oriented towards something that matters.
That is the crux of this entire modern issue, that nothing fucking matters anymore. None of the estimated points above are fulfilled by the options available to men nowadays whatsoever. Point 3 speaks to this, because everything that makes us feel fulfilled already lies within us. We are inherently vital creatures, you don’t have to teach kids to be creative, or experiment with life, or try new things. Our brains are hardwired for certain activities which are not being lived-out in everyday life. A hike on the weekend is insufficient, nor is baking one loaf of bread by hand just to be different.
Life every day is what matters. Our ancestors had hard lives, but everything they did, every single day up until they croaked, aligned with what naturally gives humans purpose. Things like: not going hungry, hunting for food, farming, taking care of animals, having tons of children, breathing the fresh air, building your own house or improving on one that you’ve inherited for generations.
What kills us today is that we all wake up and do nothing of importance. We work our little jobs, commute if we must, eat shitty, processed meals (even the “organic” food in America is a scam), don’t get enough sleep, and do it all over again the next day.
There is no freedom. Where could you go and establish a community with other like minded individuals that won’t 1) demand you live like a luddite and 2) cost a fortune, tax you to death, and require every permit under the sun to do the bare minimum? Trust me, I’ve tried looking for land and doing the whole tiny-home, have animals thing. And maybe it’s just the area I live in, but land is crazy expensive and the restrictions on what you are allowed (not capable of, allowed) to build are downright authoritarian.
So what is the point of vitalism then? We can only continue to write, and re-write, about strength and honor and a lived-life so much while changing the titles slightly between variations of the same idea. Escaping only means living on the fringes, as you can’t ever really get away—your mind is already imprinted by society, like a beaten dog. Because the gotcha-moment for these people who do off-grid or the like, they get out there and realize that humans still need social lives. We need other humans; society can be a good thing!
That’s just it: we are trapped by our needs and our wants. We want freedom and escape for the sake of purpose, but we’d go crazy if we left society behind, no matter how unbeneficial it is to us. Because that’s where the other humans are, and the System knows that’s the one aspect of our instinctual lives that it can leverage against us.
Consider the two different collared works of modernity, white and blue.
White collar work is soulless and by definition unnatural. Your time is spent doing things man was not meant to do nor has developed far along enough to cope with properly yet—looking at a blue screen, typing all day, thinking constantly with no physical outlet. Everything you do is an abstraction and you produce nothing of genuine, tangible or existential value.
Blue collar work is back-breaking, dysgenic, and miserable. The hours are long but a good portion of them will be spent dealing with things that are either retarded, dangerous, meaningless, or wasteful. You work physically, which is good, but nothing you physically produce is yours, nor do you see the fruits of any of your labor in terms of its communal, social, or asset value; the company owns your labor. Those who manage to build businesses for themselves are inundated with constant calls and anxiety about managing materials and workers. Even the guys making millions complain that they don’t even have time to spend the money they make.
No matter the amount or quality of work you put into either of these, life is not enriched. The value does not bounce back into your life as value-added. The money that you are making does not reflect the amount of time or energy spent “earning” it yet you MUST have it. And because the money is so piss-poor and you only get enough to scratch by which then turns you into just one of 8 billion global slaves, you start to not care.
At the end of the day, how many people in either of these fields care about the work they do as a result of this phenomenon? How many people either drifted into the role or job they have because it was available and they needed money? Because they went to college on a whim and got a degree that after four years left them thinking “did I really want to do this?”
How many plumbers are passionate about laying pipe and digging in shit-infested mudholes? How many programmers care to ensure that their code is efficient, fast, clean, readable, and done on time? How many construction companies are invested in building houses and entire subdivisions that are well-built and will last generations? I’d wager not many. Because again, nobody cares. The human incentive is not there. And you see it in the nihilism of a country that has forgone excellence because it’s no longer the strategy.
“A job is just a job it’s not your life purpose!” People who say this are missing the forest for the trees. They think “purpose” and “job” have to be mutually exclusive concepts and they don’t. Or at least, that’s just the way things are and you need to suck it up and get over it—bootstraps baby! Society does not have to be structured this way.
Which means that at the end of the day, anybody who decides to actively, purposefully pursue excellence will get nothing out of it because society no longer rewards that. In fact, you are more rewarded for damaging society than you are helping it. This is not to say that what we experience on an individual level is totally at the mercy of society at large, that we can’t feel personally accomplished or proud of ourselves. But there is no denying that as humans we crave creating a connection between those accomplishments and the rest of humanity because our instincts tell us that cooperation and teamwork are beneficial traits.
This was an interesting algorithmic pickup last night as as it reveals this damaging, nihilistic strategy in its entirety. From Peter Thiel no less. Competition is another word for “struggle”; if we don’t struggle as humans, we don’t grow. Well the title alone should tell you how he (Thiel) and the business world (a segment of those who run the System) prioritize that idea. It cuts right back to the beginning, where Cosmic deduced that the world will become concerned with economic slavery instead of the hateful, life-inducing growth of healthy human potential.
Everything must become a monopoly; everything must be unified to the detriment of of whatever unique qualities it once possessed.
A life once existed for humans where purpose, enrichment, and meaning were found in what they did every day. Is it possible to return to this type of life, especially after being exposed as we are to the internet, social media, modern society in general?
First of all I’m not even sure what that would look like. I advocate for a sort of techno-agrarianism where technology works alongside man in natural environments towards a clean, self-sufficient manner. The means for this already exist: solar powered electricity is easier than ever to leverage, plenty of machines exist to make harvests easier to manage on a large-scale, home-building materials can be as simple and sturdy as you are willing to acquire. But that’s the thing that I mentioned earlier: who can afford all of that? The costs are through the roof.
And that’s only the purely material items. What about sexual relationships, marriage, children, the location of your family or finding friends to do community with?
I really can’t provide an answer on this one. I simply wanted to write about what I feel to be the issue: that in general, nobody cares about anything anymore. Because if you do care, what are you going to get out of it besides a temporary, fleeting emotion that has no foundation with which to rest within your own life, and thus provide some sense of importance or fulfillment.
No country worth dying for.
No family worth living for.
No community to live within.
No friends to decompress with.
Yup to all of it. Very well said.
My ex and I tried moving to Costa Rica and stayed there for a year, and it was living hell. It wasn't just the second world conditions that sucked. It was the totality of nihilism and despair experienced every day, being outside of society, with limited interactions, no work to do, no good food to make, far away from family.
There's no place to run, really.
Speak for yourself. This is a crackpot Forierist rant writ large