The American Social Contract is Broken

Hey everybody, how you doing? Hope you're well. Let's talk today about the American social contract and how it's broken, how it no longer exists, and what that means for you when it comes to crafting your life, crafting your career, and making decisions on keeping yourself and your family safe and prosperous. So first, let's talk about what the American social contract was, right? It was this agreement that we had with our society and, and with you know, our country effectively, that if you went to school, if you got good grades, if you listened to your elders, if you stayed in line at work, you would be able to live an incredible life, a better life than any other person in any other country, just by following the rules, just by agreeing to this contract, right? You stay in line, you conform, you will have health insurance. You will have a house on a single income household. You will have job stability. You will probably have tenure. You will have insurance. You will have Social Security. You will get all of these things in exchange for this input, in exchange for this conformity or agreement to having a certain level of continuity, of staying in line. And that was actually a really good deal. It is a great deal to say, yeah, you know, I'll give up some of my desire to have full individualism if I'm able to get these things out of life, if I'm able to have security. It was security, and that's what it was, and that's what made it worthwhile to go and to work for a boss, to go and show up to work every day and contribute to this larger machine as a singular cog. That contract is broke, and we still act like it exists because there is a lag, especially with the older generations, Gen X, especially Boomers. I mean, Boomers are the worst, and a lot of Gen X are just boomers with lead poisoning. They think it still exists and they still give advice like it exists. I cannot tell you guys how much bad advice I've been given. I've really not been given that much good advice from people that I looked up to or people that I trusted, whether it was professors, whether it was family, friends. It was all really bad advice, not because they were malintended. It was because they're boomers, or at least they're spiritually boomers. And what I mean when I say spiritual boomers, is that they grew up in an era of prosperity. They grew up in an era where this social contract still existed, and they have not been able to adapt or evolve their worldview to understand that that's not the world that we live in anymore. But they have this false sense of hierarchy because in that existing, in that previously existing social contract, there was a reason to respect your elders because the lifestyle and environment that your elders grew up in back then, your great-grandparents grew up in, was very similar to the environment that your grandparents grew up in. And very similar to the environment that your parents grew up in. But the environment that we grew up in is drastically different than any of these further generations. So they say respect your elders, and I obviously think that you should respect everyone unless they, you know, don't earn it. And I think that's a big thing here too. They used to think that just because you were older and you've been through it, you earn a certain level of respect. But let's be real. I mean, the boomers really contributed to a lot of the issues that we see today. And I'm not blaming the boomers entirely. I just think they're really annoying. But anyway, so these old norms made sense when the social contract still existed. Yeah, I'll respect my elders and I'll respect my bosses and I'll respect the people ahead of me because they give me things that I want and need and that help me out. So that's a good contract. That contract doesn't exist anymore, right? You respect your boss and you get fired the next day. You respect your boss, inflation, you know, more money gets printed, our currency gets debased, you know, it becomes 30% less valuable. Over 6 years, my wages have stayed the same, right? So this contract doesn't exist anymore. Why should I respect the government? Why should I respect my lawmakers? Why should I respect my bosses and these people telling me what to do when I'm not getting my side of the cake? When I can't afford a house, right? When both me and my significant other have to work just to take care of our kids, and then they go and we bring them to this school and it's the shittiest school ever. Half the people don't speak English. The other half are trans. It's like, where is the quid pro quo here? I'm not getting my side of the bargain. This is just the reality. We cannot rely on the old social contract, and this will only continue to accelerate to the point where it's going to cause this nihilist vacuum. Right. And Nietzsche spoke about this in relation to religion. You know, the whole God is dead, we killed him. It was this idea that our old gods, our old value system, No longer apply to the modern world, and we killed it. We killed it. We could have kept going with the good thing, but we decided to ruin it and destroy it because of hobbies, because of selfishness. Quite frankly, it's a lot of selfishness. It's because the lack of high trust society, you know, if you want to say that. It's because a lack of cultural and national identity. It's because of a lack of these things that we now live in this vacuum, and the vacuum sucks because we can't rely on these old scaffoldings anymore. Right? I mean, even look at community, right? It used to be cool when you could actually rely on your community because there were a bunch of local businesses all around you. You knew the person you were getting your groceries from. You knew the person you were getting your bread from. You knew the person at the bank. But now what is it? It's all chains, right? And that was done intentionally during COVID right? Every single mom-and-pop shop shut down and now it's just all chains, right? It's all chains and private equity because those are the only ones with economies of scale and cash pockets, cash reserves deep enough to survive that. And that's only continuing to accelerate. It's very hard for small businesses to operate, and you end up doing what everyone is doing now, right? You lease everything. You lease everything, you buy everything from these large conglomerates. There's really no level of, like, small business anymore, and that sucks. So we have this nihilist identity vacuum. We can't fall back onto our old social contracts. What does that leave us with? It leaves us with the blank slate, right? And a blank slate's not always bad. A lot of times it's good. This is the first time when you can really be anything you want and do anything you want. Right? You used to have so many of these things like that inhibited you from doing that. You had a community, right? You had people that you've known your entire life around you. You've had a very strong family structure. You've also oftentimes had multi-generational households, if not multi-generational families or, or environments. You had things to lose. Now we don't really have anything to lose, right? Same with when it comes to career. We used to have something that we would risk by not going the traditional route, by not going and getting a master's by not going and climbing the corporate ladder. Now we lose nothing. The same people that are telling you, and the same people that told me, like, you're stupid if you think that you can do it on your own, you need to go work for someone, you think you're smarter than everybody, yada yada yada— those people are getting laid off at 50 years old. Those people are having to take the biggest gut check in the world of getting paid a really high salary, climbing this corporate ladder, and then getting cut just getting cut for no reason, just because they're expensive and old when they're 45 and 50. And then they have two options. They either retire and they weren't saving like they should. Even if they were saving, the money is so much less valuable. It didn't go as far as they were hoping. Or they have to check their ego to get a job for literally a fraction of what they were previously being paid. This happens a lot, and it is a very fascinating phenomenon. It's fascinating too, because a lot of these other people that are like, "Oh, corporate's the way to go, you know, I'm invincible," because that's what they thought the social contract was. It's not how it is anymore. So we're seeing this nihilist vacuum create a lot of really shitty alternatives, right? I mean, truly shitty alternatives. You have polycules, you have, you know, boss ladies, you have feminism, you have all of these things which are a rejection of the old social norms. That is not the move. Obviously, any level of discretion, it can tell you that it's not the move. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck, you know? And we should trust our intuition. Same with like fashion style. Like when dudes wear those long-ass jean shorts with the loafers, like does nobody thinks this is cool other than people that can't think for themselves? So we can't go back. Trad life, a lot of people are like, well, the alternatives to going back to trad life, the trad life thing doesn't work anymore 'cause the trad life presupposes that you have a trad environment, right? Yeah, that would be super cool if you could just get a normal job and work hard and support a household. If you could just go and buy a house without any problems and not, you know, kill yourself with debt to cover mortgage and property taxes. If you could go and have this certain level of community and independence, but that's not really how it works. And there's a reason why, you know, the boomers were wrong, but there was a reason they delineated from the traditional structure, 'cause it wasn't ideal and it wasn't keeping up with the times. So it requires you to come up with a hybrid model. It requires you to come up with a value-based system of saying, this is what I value and these are the opportunities in front of me. And to craft that yourself, the problem is that that takes a lot of work, right? It's so much easier to say, this is what my family's always done, so this is what I will do. This is my family's identity. This is my nation's identity, so this is my identity. That was huge. I mean, think about it. Our last names, are just the occupations of our ancestors, right? Like Smith, that's blacksmith, right? You can think of a million examples. It's just occupations 'cause that's who you were, right? You identified and you presented yourself as like Noah, son of XYZ. Like that's how you presented yourself. That doesn't exist anymore. So we had this blank slate. That's why everyone's having an identity crisis. That's why everyone's, you know, kind of just numbing themselves. And that's also what they want. They want us to be in these little cubes, right? Into these little apartment cubes individually where we're just consuming, consuming, consuming, consuming, spending, spending, spending, renting, renting, renting, never building, never owning, never establishing any level of independent communications and independent like community systems, right? They want you to be separated and delineated from that. So the question of what do we do now, you know, is hard to answer because, you know, it's a vacuum. There's really no other answer. The biggest thing you can do is obviously focus on autonomy and independence, right? Right, that's like the biggest thing that they wanna take away from you. That's the biggest thing that is hard to do is become self-sufficient and autonomous. I believe that the first step to like having reliance on one another is being independently autonomous as opposed to just being a slave to the government, you know? And they're really hollowing out that middle class. And I say the government, but I mean, I literally mean the government. A lot of people, they depend on, you know, welfare and EBT, and that's what they want. They want this welfare state They wanna hollow out the middle class where you can actually be self-sufficient. So you have to work really, really, really hard. And you have to think very, very independently. And you have to come up with your own idea of what success looks like. You have to completely remove all presuppositions. You have to remove the advice from all of the boomers who are saying this is how things should go because this is how things went when I was around. You quite literally have to start from scratch. Now that sounds scary. That sounds uncertain. But what I recommend is you get comfortable with uncertainty because uncertainty is the only certainty, right? That is the only constant is inconsistency. So get comfortable with that. The best way you can do it is just ruffle up your lifestyle a little bit. How long have you been living the same lifestyle? How long have you been in the same place? How long have you had the same hobbies? How long have you had the same routines and friend groups and outlook on life? How long have you been consuming the same music? Everything is, is comfortable and similar. And you gotta understand, the human psyche loves consistency, right? We do anything we can to just maintain a certain level of consistency. Novelty is incredible because novelty means opportunity. So how can you switch that up? How can you find a way to up earth your life and get comfortable with being uncomfortable? Because when that starts, if it starts at an environmental level, the cognitive and the psychological follows and the spiritual follows that, right? You get comfortable with being uncomfortable. You're in a new place. Suddenly new ideas aren't as scary. New opportunities are, you know, less intimidating to pursue. The ability to change your habits starts with making a foundation where it's easier to slip new habits in. So remove the consistent boring, or consistent boring, you know, not serving hobbies and habits and activities that you're doing. Switch it up, make yourself scared, make yourself uncomfortable, and then start from scratch. Identify what matters to you, identify what you're good at, find ways to build skills, find ways to be independent, and don't worry about missing out because there's nothing to miss out anymore. I mean, look at everyone graduating right now. No one's getting jobs. And if they are, they're ass. You know, I went to a private college where a lot of people paid a lot of money to go there, and most of them ended up getting jobs selling life insurance to their friends and families. Like, that is an embarrassing job. That is pretty much a public humiliation ritual. And these are people that were spending tens of thousands of dollars a year to go here, or at least their parents were, and that's what they're getting. That was back in 2020. It's much worse now. So you have nothing to lose. Just send it, you know? All right, that's it.