Now: This Horrid Time We Live In
Channel: Sam Vaknin's Musings
Date: 2022-03-13

This is the most nightmarish period in human history. It is the age of Splitting: This is the age of splitting: black vs. white, 100% right against 1000% wrong. Nothing in between, no subtleties or nuances. The world as a morality play of angels fighting demons.

Public intellectuals, “experts”, gurus, and coaches thrive on splitting. They sacrifice their intellectual integrity for the sake of dumb popularity.

Splitting is an infantile psychological defense mechanism. It is a hallmark of immaturity and an antidote to empathy. It precludes cooperation and compromise and fosters conflict.

Age of Death
Age of Spectacle
Age of Self-sufficiency
Age of Risk Aversion
Age of Magical Thinking
Age of Entitlement

Age of Distrust: This is the age of pervasive distrust: of experts, of science, of the authorities, of the future, and of each other. Everyone is wary of being played. Every has a pet conspiracy theory.

Nowhere is the mistrust more profound than between men and women in all age groups, from all backgrounds, everywhere in the world.

Around 70% of men and women say that they deeply or somewhat distrust the opposite sex. The remainder totally or “somewhat” trust their counterparties.

Women complain that men are “feminine”: not committed or invested, weak, ineffectual, and craven. The vagaries of online dating served to augment this inauspicious view of men.

Men describe women as sexually unboundaried, prone to cheating and drunkenness, and cunning.

A whopping 16% of people under age 25 cheat in their relationships every year (compared to 2% per annum in the 1980s). Cheating had become a default casual sex behavior and is now intimately coupled with excessive drinking.

This supernova of infidelity is driven by empowered and financially independent women who no longer tolerate male abuse and bad or no sex in their primary dyads.

This abysmal mutual resentment and hypervigilance has dire outcomes: about one third of the surveyed in Pew Center studies are lifelong singles, another 15% are in between rapidfire pseudorelationships.

The marriage rate is at an all time low, having declined by 50% since 1990. Birth rates in industrial countries have plummeted and the populations in many nations are aging and declining at dizzying speeds.

Since 2016, aloneness is the new normal for the majority of men and women worldwide.

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