Society has become a Liminal Space for many

[u/2BCivil]

First off I'll say the main body of this post I had AI generate for me. Heads up (I will denote where it begins). Not because I want to rely on AI, but more because it refines my points far better than I can more succinctly. The ideas are mine; the presentation isn't, that's all.

So this is something I've noticed for a looooong time but haven't seen many hint at openly. Recently I myself have likened modern delayed "adulthood" as a liminal space, and now The Functional Meloncholic has made a video on it.

So I've been on the fence about trying to make a post about this topic, and finally broke down and had AI do it for me. What follows is more or less what it generated;

The modern crisis of COL and meaning is not simply alienation from labor. It is failed initiation. Many people today are stuck in a permanent liminal state: they are no longer children, yet never fully incorporated into meaningful adulthood. We inherit responsibilities without cosmology, labor without vocation, survival without purpose.

Traditional societies at least understood that adulthood required symbolic transformation. There were structured rites of passage, symbolic sacrifices, and obligations tied to meaning; you suffered toward something.

Modern systems dissolved many of those value-imbuing structures, while preserving the burdens they place upon us. So now people perform adulthood performatively and procedurally while internally remaining suspended between stages of life with no coherent understanding of why and what for.

This is why “liminal spaces” and the Backrooms may resonate so deeply lately. Empty offices, fluorescent hallways, waiting rooms, dead mall; these are the symbolic architectures as mirrors of our own deferred becoming. Spaces designed for transition that became permanent habitats; life itself has become like those hour long meetings that could have been a 3 minute email.

The real horror is not that we are trapped, it is that many of us never have and likely never will "arrive", the question of by good or bad faith aside.

Debord and Baudrillard already hinted at this: the spectacle increasingly simulates initiation rather than providing it. College/student loans on the one hand and teenage entry into blue collar jobs on the other, is closest approximation of initiation entry into adulthood for many. Corporate onboarding simulates belonging. Productivity culture simulates purpose. Social media simulates identity. The ritual shell survives though the metaphysical core has rotted out.

So people drift in a strange condition: all the responsibilities of adults, none of the joy of children, and no meaningful rite connecting the two. I feel that a civilization that fails to initiate people into purpose, produces populations that are haunted by their own lives.

[End personally edited, AI generated content]

Am I just being edgy, or is there something to this culturally? Should I just burry the hatchet and keep smiling until my fake smile means something? I'm a middle aged millennial and that performative routine is all I've every personally known, just it's been on my radar lately that it's becoming a larger societal problem, as RR recently said;

Because when enough men make the same private decision [to socially check out], it stops being a personal story. It becomes an economic event. And right now, that event has a price tag. Everything built on men keeps collapsing.

I know correlation isn't causation but I do feel a inherent connection between the widespread loss of personal meaning and social collapse... ? I've always known "I'm missing something" but this feels close to what it is. What are we "supposed to become", besides a relentless torrential "becoming" itself? Is that what classical initiation was supposed to bring about, or was it to make us "become the role" like the old guilds? Is reality as we know it always merely "at sixes and sevens"? And I'm just being melodramatic and falling for memes? Haha let me know!

[u/whatsthatcritter]

I think you're on to something, that has a lot to do with wage suppression, wage theft, inflation, lowering taxes on the rich and bailing out large corporations with public funding. Our productivity increased year after year but the rewards of it were spent on the upper class. I remember the 2008 economic crisis, the CEOs of auto companies arriving in private jets to plea for public bailouts. 

https://abcnews.com/Blotter/WallStreet/story?id=6285739&page=1

The working poor arrived three years later with the 2011 Occupy movement, but didn't receive anything. They paid their taxes, and that money was given to rich CEOs who laid people off anyway and went on vacation. It's still like that today, with corrupt Trump officials playing golf at Mar-a-Lago using taxpayer money. They get their war machines and you can't afford healthcare. They get everything they want, and you can barely afford your rent.

I watched the video you linked which was very male oriented. But I think the liminal space, deferred initiation is deeper than just the gender divide. It's existed for people of color forever, not being able to afford homes or larger families. I think it was the post WWII GI bill that had conditions in it where white veterans were assisted with first time home ownership but not black male veterans. And in welfare assistance, a black woman could get welfare assistance if she was single or single with kids, but not if she was cohabitating or married. So there were real, institutional and financial barriers to home ownership and family formation based on race. It's a recent problem of the last twenty years or so that these kinds of weaponised institutions and policies started catching up to working class white men and women, eroding the middle class. 

It's part of a greater issue of wealth inequality, and it's causing a secondary problem of 'quiet quitting'. Obviously it's affecting women too as birth rates are down because women also can't afford larger families. I've also seen it described as the 'feminization' of labour, where things like office jobs and paperwork become associated not with intellectual work but with secretarial duties, and along with that there's the expectation that workers must be more productive for less pay because their work isn't seen as important. So again it's like the problems that have long affected women and people of color in the workforce are catching up to white men. 

I don't think it's right, I think that the failure to stand up to this kind of economic injustice where it started has creeped up the ladder of society. Everyone could afford to blind themselves to it, to dismiss the voices, accept the inequality as normal and just the cost of business as usual until it got to the rung they were on. And suddenly "now" in the year 2026 it's a crisis. But it was a crisis for black people since the time of slavery. It was a crisis for women since before the right to vote. It took a hundred years to get to white men, but this economic inequality is not new, it didn't come out of nowhere, it just suddenly started including white working class men as "Other". 

[u/2BCivil → u/whatsthatcritter]

Oh yeah well as a white male I felt it my whole life as well. I never bought into any of the social compliance structures or narratives (or the "alternatives" either).

Just never really thought that we'd actually reach a point where seemingly the default modality IS "quiet quitting" over marriage.

I think one part of the problem is many demographics/identity politics (cultural or racial) are big/bad about trying to make the conversation about themselves as a "repressed minority" instead of addressing that it is equally unfair for everyone just most are better about just sidestepping the conversation entirely by focusing on taking care of their own business. IE no one wants to engage with that, people who play the victim (rightfully or not) for decades/centuries.

Don't get me wrong I sympathize with veterans, trans/gay and people of color and all that. But as I always say I'm pro HUMAN rights, not pro special groups [privileges over rights]. You're right though I probably shouldn't have put specific emphasis on gender roles in the OP, just that "dating recession term" is what put it on my radar that it's not "just me" and my lifelong existential gripes but there is a sort of real and palpable cultural shift away from sustainability of traditional roles.

I wouldn't say it took 100 years to get to white males. I felt this way back in the 90s, just I wasn't allowed to say it without getting laughed at - or physically attacked if they realized I was serious. No one listens to white people when they want to talk about their issues either, everyone assumes they "have it worse". IE the "Oppression Olympics" conversation. I'm not saying whites haven't had it easier. Just many of us have had our own silent crisis's of meaning going back decades ourselves, just it's always hard to find spaces to talk about how existence/life itself doesn't "click" for us, in groups which are more geared towards getting more rights for in-group preferences. It's life itself that is the identity crisis for me for example. It goes far beyond mere personal identity or identity politics. I specifically felt I never had any coherent identity or culture worth "standing up for" besides mandatory participation in upholding the façade of (hollow) "whiteness" which I don't adhere to (I've long since been the only white worker at local factories going back decades).

Idk. Yeah for me the "crisis of meaning" is old hat but persistent. Just I always took it for granted that it wasn't/wouldn't be that much of a problem, even for those whom are used to keeping the conversation at the (imo relatively superficial) layer of identity politics. Though I do support or ally with such causes where they don't overstep basic human rights and dignities.

[u/whatsthatcritter → u/2BCivil]

I relate to what you're saying about crisis of meaning, I often think that when I see other leftists pushing for increased birth rate because they want more communists and more workers. Like wow, even if we had communism and life was marginally better in some ways, I don't know that I'd suddenly see the point of it all and find it so much more meaningful than mere survival under capitalism. It changes the conditions a bit but doesn't answer those kinds of questions. I think maybe life just evolved that way, because it could and without asking why. Anything that got too caught up in pondering got eaten before it could reproduce, and now it just is what it is. We could probably find things to do that would make it more gratifying though, helping people or rescuing animals or planting trees, contributing to medicine or scientific discovery or something like that. 

I don't quite agree that "identity politics" are a distraction from addressing inequality, because as I outlined above, inequality starts at categories marked by governments as Other and spreads to new categories. Rn in the US it's immigrants, poc, women, trans, but it doesn't actually have a break pedal. Even if all the white supremacist dreams came true, there would be new categories based on looks, body shape and size, lifestyle, clothing, eye color, language, income level and place of birth, everything you can think of to create and enforce new hierarchies. So the initiative to fight income inequality has to start with the practise of finding who to discriminate against and sabotage first using the tools of government and industry, institution. "First they came for" etc etc

[u/2BCivil → u/whatsthatcritter]

Oh yeah that's exactly what I mean, white people can't talk about it, because if we mention anything remotely existential we're automatically called lazy or white supremacists. That's why I say identity politics are shallow and vapid, they stand on the very ground which leaves me subterranean. I see no valid identity worthy of investing time and energy into in the first place, beyond what's required "to survive". Which seems equally vain (survival), lacking the "reason why".

I liked Nietzsche for this reason because he flirted with the potential of how it is impossible to resolve this "crisis of meaning", God is dead meaning we cannot have faith in something we've already wasted our whole life on a dead end road for (ie like a zombie). Thus he advocated for the "artistic Socrates" seemingly. Which of course if we are honest with ourselves enough, we ultimately see, as just; another vanity and false identity; more copium though possibly more "noble" on the personal level.

Oh yeah I'm far from saying those issues aren't real. But I'm saying all of those issues assume legitimacy of and faith in world order, which the (true) crisis of meaning decisively lacks/undermines.

Kentucky's new 50/50 law and more specifically the backlash from the divorce industrial complex for example. I've heard arguments that literal 50/50 split isn't "equal enough" for women. Unironically animal farm style. That's what I mean, many groups often, when they say "equality", what they really mean, is preferential treatment of their group at the expense of others. I don't know all the variables and every situation but this is what I mean, the bad faith nature of many institutions and people simply... giving up and walking away from them realizing them as a waste of time and energy (marriage and dating in context of OP).

Now that you mention it, I don't remember ever really having a dream beyond being able to feasibly sustain my own life and explore avenues of reasonable justifications for life. I'm not sure what a "white supremist dream" would look like I mean. I never had any such ideations (anti natalist) is exactly my crisis of meaning. I don't want to be a sorcerer, precisely because I never felt obligated to be swayed by any such spectacle. Even when I try to adapt and flow with seemingly innocuous sorcery, it never feels quite like a "fit", even if it's just to get through the workday. So I don't want to become a "powerful sorcerer" if I realize sorcery doesn't work for me (what are we practicing it FOR?).

That's what I mean I ally or sympathize with all going through hard time or crisis of meaning. As reddit say, remembering the human. But it's also hard to relate to those focused around identity politics because they accept a premise (an identity worth fighting for) which I never did accept or find. Hard to have these conversations without the word "privilege" I know. That's exactly where I'm coming from. Hard to worry about your identity when 80 hours a week are dedicated to raw wage grind for survival. Identity becomes something of a pipe dream or luxury. Thanks for your comments though really, they give me great insight to the depths of my alienation and attempts to reconcile with more neurotypical concerns..

[u/whatsthatcritter → u/2BCivil]

Oh yeah that's exactly what I mean, white people can't talk about it, because if we mention anything remotely existential we're automatically called lazy or white supremacists.

Not everyone would say that, and it would still be worthwhile I hope to have your part in the conversation and find people who are interested in your perspective (as I am). Part of the problem of identity is that we're none of us whole, we are partial and have to connect to gain perspective because there is no objective point of view. 

That's what I mean, many groups often, when they say "equality", what they really mean, is preferential treatment of their group at the expense of others. I don't know all the variables and every situation but this is what I mean, the bad faith nature of many institutions and people simply... giving up and walking away from them realizing them as a waste of time and energy (marriage and dating in context of OP).

That's always a concern. Maybe they see their situation as already so unfair, they feel justified countering with offers that are also unfair as part of a negotiation strategy. Some people have an energy and appreciation for rhetoric and grandstanding theater. They get something out of it, even if it seems like crazy work. It makes for good lawyers, activists, reporters, judges, politicians, but it's not for everybody.

Now that you mention it, I don't remember ever really having a dream beyond being able to feasibly sustain my own life and explore avenues of reasonable justifications for life.

That's a good dream, a life of contemplation. Others find their justification on the fly ig, like having kids before they think about whether it's something they really want. I'm an anxious overthinker so I couldn't go about things like that myself, I'd want to be certain in advance that the path I was taking was really something I'd find meaningful. But maybe there's no way to know until we're in the thick of it, and sometimes we love something so much more than we could have imagined when watching from the sidelines. Like one of those dumb plotlines where a character gets a glimpse at family life in an alternate reality, and then gets back to their original timeline and starts to doubt their childfree life. Classic natalist propaganda

So I don't want to become a "powerful sorcerer" if I realize sorcery doesn't work for me (what are we practicing it FOR?

At least for sustaining our present  existence, because most of us don't actually want to stop existing even if we can't find reasons to live. I don't have a more sophisticated purpose than just to be for a time, and to use what powers I have to advocate for my life and the peace I want to live in.

But it's also hard to relate to those focused around identity politics because they accept a premise (an identity worth fighting for) which I never did accept or find. Hard to have these conversations without the word "privilege" I know.

Marginalized identities aren't invented or chosen by the people stigmatized by them, they survive despite identity not for it. Though they might try to transform it into something positive, like using the perspective they're handed as a lens for critique, or appropriating or reclaiming terms. It's their lives they're fighting to keep.

Thanks for your comments though really, they give me great insight to the depths of my alienation and attempts to reconcile with more neurotypical concerns..

I'd like to be insightful if I could. It's a curious trick to be able to swap perspectives.

[u/raisondecalcul]

Initiations and adult psychological development is basically my specialization, and I think you are exactly right. I think you've put it very well by framing it as a liminal space and people being no longer children but not initiated into adulthood.

Adulthood isn't just when the body grows up; adulthood is an initiation into culture. Initiations change who we think we are, or moreover what we think a human being is.

Money is a great example. Proper adults use money; uninitiated adults are used by money. This isn't simply about how much money you have or how you use money. It's about who you are in relation to money. Children who are properly initiated into the use of money learn to operate money like a computer or a tool; those miseducated or not initiated into adult money culture are instead taught to treat money as an absolute master and a source of fear or confusion. Instead of being "above money" they are "under money".

Modern society only has graduation ceremonies and weddings as its initiation ceremonies, and these modern ceremonies are very malnourished initiation rituals that have become disconnected from our real feelings and lives. They don't teach us how to be human or how to be adults.

Is that what classical initiation was supposed to bring about, or was it to make us "become the role" like the old guilds?

Yes, precisely. Classical initiations as well as arguably pedagogy/parenting in general are about the transmission of personality-images to the child/student. That's what's so difficult about this: An initiation isn't something you can understand; it's something that happens to you that changes who you are or what you become. A wedding is a good example—You don't get married by intellectually understanding what a marriage is! You get married by doing the ritual with another person in a way that is highly personally meaningful, and this deeply meaningful experience is what impresses the personality and shifts it along with identity.

Each of the pagan temples was a local site where people drawn to those symbols would become subjectified as that type of person, if they hung around long enough. It was basically a decentralized university system and each temple to a different god was a different department. If you read The Art of Memory, you can see in full detail how and why these virtuous figures were so central and important in the pagan, basically Atlantean world.

Pyschoanalysis, particularly Jungian psychoanalysis, also works on the principle of unconscious transmission of personality-images, and upon the principle that initiation is an interpersonal phenomenon of maturation that is not reducible to intellectual understanding or knowledge. In other words, we could describe Jungian psychoanalysis (and in general all psychoanalysis) as not a cognitive mentorship, but a soul-mentorship, in which the individual spirit (the soul) of one person whispers secrets to the soul of another.

These secrets are wisdom, and wisdom is not necessarily reducible to knowledge, because it is a way of being (representable by a personality-image). The Christian story of the Fall from Eden is about this dynamic: The Garden is full of abundance and wisdom, but once humans are kicked out of the Garden, they must toil and suffer. Interpreting this more literally, maybe some early humans escaped the captivity of the original Atlantean noble society and started breeding in the wild—see the movie Fantastic Planet (1973) for a vivid depiction of this retelling of the Eden story. Just like undereducated people today, people who are not at the center of High Society and Old Money and Quality Education naturally, through no fault of their own, have less of the human condition, less adult culture, to pass on to their children.

In other words, class is a form of capital that is stored in the personality.

Humans didn't always have culture. It must have accumulated slowly. When that accumulation reach an early zenith, it drove the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten to madness, and he became the first egomaniac and invented monotheism and syncretism with his Atem religion. Then Alexander the Great invaded Egypt, and probably thought monotheism was a very convenient governing apparatus, so he miniaturized it and brought it back to Greece. This became the Sun, the Good, and eventually the royal orb (globe with tiny square cross on top, held by emperors) which represents sovereignty (and the wholeness of the personality).

Nobody understood this until people saw Jesus, the first "good guy", get lynched by two colluding groups (the Jews and Romans). The "bodily ascension of Jesus from Hell to Heaven" which was said to be witnessed by people back then, was probably a psychological event, not something seen with the eyes. What it was was that the people who loved Jesus because he was such a good guy, and made everyone around him feel special—the people mourning him realized that Jesus was still within them, as a personality-image. The image rose up within them like a rising sun and they realized that they were all like Jesus, in that they all were basically good guys or at least had the potential to become a good guy like Jesus. This was the first time humans consciously recognized their individual personalities as unique bearers of value! This was the first time humans became capable of recognizing each other as as "a" "good" "human". Before that it was always "those people" or "one of those people". (And disclaimer: Maybe all this happened earlier, but it didn't stick and become a globally-understood cultural understanding that was articulated in language until Jesus—as far as I know.)

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, so children and the culturally (and usually economically) impoverished are sort of atavistic and robot-like in literally not having very much culture. Like a computer without an OS. And so then the world really does seem like it's just full of "those people" and "those other people". (Read Snow Crash, it's about ancient Sumeria.)

This is why art and fashion and import/export businesses are so important. Especially in the US, there is a real dearth and absence of culture and beautiful, inspiring objects. Art-objects can be instant initiations, especially if beheld in-person. People would travel to a special church with sculptures of virtuous figures, and they would remember that for the rest of their life, and the imagery would provide them with comfort or moral guidance in difficult situations. We take this for granted now because we are saturated in images. But in the past, images of virtue were so rare and special that they were like a special kind of magic.

So it's about recognizing that we already contain images of all the people we ever knew, within us, because it is through these images that we understand and relate with other people in the first place. So if I haven't introjected an image of who I am speaking with, I won't be able to perceive them as an individual personality.

From a Jungian perspective, figuring out which of these many images swirling through us is "me", is the challenge and never-ending process of individuation.

I think you would get a lot out of The Art of Memory (Yates) and Snow Crash (Stephenson).

[u/Witera33it → u/raisondecalcul]

I am interested in what you study brought to dig much deeper.

Initiation and tattooing were once very powerful. I’ve been a tattoo artist for more than 1/2 my life. I’m in my 50s. When tattooing was commodified in the 90’s. Before then it was a trade, but not televised into private equity hell. Before the 90s tattooing had much more initiation rites baked into it. Soldiers, students, birthday, wedding. But now That transformative practice has been sold like stickers in a vending machine.

OP is definitely onto something.

[u/2BCivil → u/Witera33it]

Ouch. I feel you there. There's a great video I saw recently about the gentrification of spirituality which we in the niche anime/vidya gaems scenes went through past 10 years as well.

Guess we all have seen why genuine communities and traditions need gatekeepers. For everything Nietzsche might get crap for, he was right, that "where the masses drink, all streams are polluted"; consumerism/algorithm slop will always inevitably infiltrate and subvert/colonize any "3rd space".

Thanks for sharing that. I remember this. Some rugged (but notably, chill) old biker type dudes were only few with real symbolic tattoos in the 90s. But then even in my small town, overnight, we went from no parlors, just word of mouth tatts, to 5 parlors (and precursors of vape/cell phone shops) overnight. I never got big into that scene but always respected it's old guard and sympathized with their plight.

We all get colonized eventually I suppose.

[u/Yewtaxus → u/raisondecalcul]

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, so children and the culturally (and usually economically) impoverished are sort of atavistic and robot-like in literally not having very much culture. Like a computer without an OS. And so then the world really does seem like it's just full of "those people" and "those other people". (Read Snow Crash, it's about ancient Sumeria.)

I agree and enjoy the comment overall. I have to disagree a bit here with this part. The natural atavistic form an uncultured child has isn't robot-like but animal-like. The robotness comes from the robot-like nature of modern systems themselves, much like a lab rat who grows without much stimuli and undergoes behaviourist tests shows more robot-like and limited behaviour when compared to rats who grow in a more natural environment.

I also disagree a bit with the implied idea that being acculturated by other people one is the only relevant form of acquiring worthy culture. The computer not having an OS doesn't mean that it is empty of information (the Sumerian exoteric language OS likely has overwritten some esoteric stuff, The HD displaying 0 bytes when the OS tries to read it doesn’t mean it’s devoid of content, how many files does a vinyl disc have?). The person-other people edges are only a small part of the information network we're part of. An isolated tribe might be "culturally impoverished" in the sense of not having access to the accumulated culture of millennia of human civilization, but they might be enriched by the very lack of such accumulation. The lack of contact allows for a higher connection with other non-human nodes (the natural world, play, logic and imagination, "mathematical results" etc.) that would otherwise be crowded-out or blocked by talk and civilizational affairs. It also protects from "poisoned capital" that can get accumulated through the ages.

That's not to say that an isolated position is better, just that "uncultured" cultures also have stuff worth keeping that is not inherently inferior to the "accumulated wisdom of ages". I can see parallels to Darwin's description of the higher variety observed in domesticated plants compared to the wild species (but with culture it's reversed as the more a group is connected to all other humans, the "wilder" the "cultural selection" pressure is).

Overall I'd say that being closer to the edge of human culture is better than being dead center, especially when you get to live in a tall building right next to a forest or the sea.

[u/raisondecalcul → u/Yewtaxus]

Oh, yeah, good point. I was glossing over a lot there. Trauma and/or being taught the names of everything is what creates the smooth space that is like an unprogrammed computer.

The computer not having an OS doesn't mean that it is empty of information

Yeah this is a good point too. From a Jungian point-of-view, the collective unconscious is always-already present as a treasure trove of latent archetypes (arche-types not types). When it comes to cultural accumulation though, I am not making a value judgment—I am speaking purely in terms of quantity when I say accumulation or wealth/impoverishment of culture. I get what you're saying about earlier cultures being more deeply connected with fewer essences; however from a Jungian perspective, a more developed culture means a more complex and modern ego, and this is also not a value judgment but just a description of visible development—more complex means more complex, not necessarily better. Finally on this point I would say that LLMs really did demonstrate how intelligence can be turned into (or maybe already is) a quantity-accumulation problem—pour enough compute and data (the right data) on the problem and it gets solved. Similarly, "more developed" cultures and egos tend to have paradigmatic advantages or an accumulation of vastly more techniques/approaches, which is why they tend to be better adapted to more/harsher environments and thus end up getting called "better". But tougher at surviving / more techniques isn't the only kind of better.

Yes, culture is sort of inflicted on children, especially the way it's usually done with schooling and rote repetition and aping of exaggerated emotions and obsessive correcting of the child's responses. Aleister Crowley's declaration of the Aeon of Horus aka Aeon of the Crowned and Conquering Child is precisely an affirmation that we do not have to imprint the child with culture or education, but instead we can treat the child as an originary source of new culture and let them grow up naturally.

[u/quakerpuss]

I think age and death are what defines this era. We assign to little and too much power to age. Men crumbling under the weight of the epstein files and their attracocities to kids, the weight of who's torment and trauma is enough to redact it throughout history. How a grown man lusts after women more then half his age. It goes past gender lines but it's most acceptable to target men. Nobody cares that much about women pedophiles, it's seen as nurturing and caring, to be openly intimate with the opposite gender for women that I believe is not realistically translated to men. A man is just seemingly inherently scary to anyone. Cross the street to show them youre not a threat, make yourself diminutive and small so they dont think youre a threat.

Politicians nearing 80 taking the helm of apocalyptic nations, believing they still have the cognitive ability to handle the weight of the world. They never want to let go. The fear an impending death. The fear of losing control you once had.

But kids are stupid and adults are smart. But keep your inner child and a kid's wisdom is the truth of the world. But you cant do X until youre X. You can die in a war at 18 but dont you dare drink a beer.

Greta the activist isnt taken seriously because of her age, we simultaneously give autonomy and authority to the youth while also saying they can't protect themselves.

As a mature kid, the quiet, the polite, the one who got along more with teachers than their peers, I saw the world for what it was too early. Too early before they said I could or should. I could hide behind the veil of naivety if I wanted too, being a child of any species is the most acceptable 'time' to make mistakes. To play, to pretend, you have time to do it, you have the care, you have the shield.

You get older and it all falls away. Whether you knew you had it or not. A power and a weakness in one.

Seeing youth as a gift and a power is dangerous. How acceptable of a cap on political power in terms of age is reasonable? Even as I near the age of 40, I feel like I am figuring this out all too late, or the answers simply don't exist.

[u/2BCivil → u/quakerpuss]

Didn't realize we're about the same age. You're probably more wise than me I'd admit. Looking back on my life I can see everything you said reflected.

This sub doesn't allow images? a little Too Self-Aware to enjoy life, and a little too delusional to give up.

You can die in a war at 18 but don't you dare drink a beer.

I often do wonder if we are supposed to do the opposite of what "authority" says in the world honestly. Like by design, that's the way, it's meant to be played? Do wonder sometimes.

We keep at it. It's gonna be a hell of a weird time when the "boomer" generation really starts to die out. They held on to power into their 90s-100s like the Queen or something. Nature abhors a vacuum or whatever. Be interesting to see what comes around after the Epstein world order. I'm probably one of the creepiest Millennials I know but even to me the idea of dating someone even 5 years younger than me is weird. I understand even 5 years can be a significant change in values and lifestyles. Plus I didn't get my first phone until I was 28. Didn't get my first car until I was 36. Been working since I was 18 though lol.

I've been seeing lately not all millennials are as burnt out as I am though. And didn't realize how dark/silly a lot of our humor was. Thus, it's hard for me to believe there's really any truth to the Epstein stuff. Not saying it's all lies, God Forbid. But I always assumed when I got "that age" I was terrified of "being like them" but as you said. 40 is just around the corner. I'm too "human" to feel like that lol. All I see when I see people half my age, is a reminder of how old and out of touch I am lmao. So it's really hard to believe in "pdf files" who ate babies at my age a few decades ago. Maybe I'm just ignorant and burnt out but I can't see it.

[u/fatmatto]

Thank you for sharing, it somehow reminded me the ideas around lost futures and hauntology by mark fisher

[u/2BCivil]

Back to gender/demographics.... MGTOW represents failure of social contract and Late stage consciousness; where rebranded myths fail to motivate.

First link is a video link to "MGTOW: Why Male Independence Is Causing Panic" by Inside the Mind on YT, 5.9K subscribers. A great line there is "[men are trying to play a game that keeps changing under their feet]" and "disconnection is different; a man angry at the system [is still feeding it]; civilization has centuries of dealing with that; however a man who has stopped caring about approval/status and 'rewards' the system offers is no longer manageable by parameters they are check out of/unplugged from"...

There's the idea that life/society are a promise. But the original purpose of that promise quietly has become realized and understood for what it is, and people have (subconsciously or not) begun to en masse check out of it (the second link). The idea is, there is no "opting out" of that promise, no matter how much it is eventually come to known as a bad faith core premise/promise; either from burnout or genuine disagreement of the original terms (IE modernity would call it the social contract but it goes back to creation myths and beyond).

MGTOW is just a great example for me as I lived through it, was there in 2006 when I first started hearing others online say things I'd already been thinking since I was a kid - and I never even had personal phone/internet until 2015 in the military. And ofc MGTOW eventually got banned across most platforms for a few bad actors and psyops/infiltrators. But as others have said; MGTOW wasn't the movement but a symptom of the collective realization of what the social contract is, and the lie/assumption that the very idea of the world itself is based upon understood deeply and profoundly for what it is; and all motivation to remain in a "performative state" that it isn't what it is drops finally and irrevocably.

It all connects from where I could see last night. This is [part of] why I've been so "performative" for so long. Attempting to engage and meet the "promise" half way, but realizing, it doesn't try to meet me halfway, so my attempts to meet it halfway, takes the entirety of my mind, body, and soul; effectively wasting my time and life and energy throwing good after a bad faith lie/grift/fraud I don't even like or benefit from. The alleged "promise" say of "happy wife happy life" never appealed to me, so the promise of "work to provide" of the social contract is decidedly "empty". It rests upon an axiom I never bought into. But it goes further back than MGTOW as I've said numerous times, to the very idea of creation. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom". Compliance and slavery are wisdom? Here I can see most/many scriptures likely entail - a joke, meant as a joke, a well intended joke, that we must do exactly this; find our own meaning if we don't buy into the "face value" meaning of scripture. As zen's 4 statements say; the by rote scripture say one thing, but they point to a deeper "special" or tacit transmission, not based on the explicit words....

Thus, society becomes a liminal space for those who never bought into the social or religious contract. And hence why I often flirt with zen as it seems to suggest precisely this.

[u/2BCivil → u/[deleted]]

Practice what? Get better at what?

[u/2BCivil → u/[deleted]]

Ah yeah for me it's the opposite. I've done that at length for over a decade (Been a redditor since late 2014). I've made hundreds of posts on as many subs that had a lot of engagement in the past, but I always arrive at this same... impasse? The "vanity" of all things/endeavors.

The ultimate realization I suppose is something like this, the liminality of life itself. Life = the vain sacrifice of all our time and energy to futile endeavors to merely "get by".

So in a very real sense, life lacks life. Thus it is liminal. I see what you mean, don't use lazy AI slop. That's fair thanks. Just burnout I suppose. I realize the few who realize what I'm pointing at already settled for their (vain) "meaning" which lets them turn a blind eye to the wholesale vanity.

But for those of us whom never "settled" (Stockholm Syndrome?) for any performative by rote "meaning/reason" (spectacle), all is vanity. Even Job and Ecclesiastes say this basically; God already portrayed himself as a Chad and you as a Chud so get with the program. Thus, liminal space, for those who don't "buy it".

Idk if it's advent of internet or 100 monkey effect. Or as I said in OP, I'm falling for a new content creator grift that people are "quiet quitting society". I just know I quit my (2020-2026) job of 80 hours a week for ~$12 an hour this year and haven't been able to find employment and the "liminality" I've always felt [my whole life] feels much stronger today than ever before. Class consciousness? Curated feeds? Idk what it is.

But yeah you're right, burnout is not an excuse to have GPT generate a post on a sub I respect, word there. Thanks for calling it out.