Amerika

Generally our efforts fail one of two ways: either we set out to achieve an objective and do not, or while in progress toward achieving our objective — we think — we discover that the path has other consequences that violate the goals of a higher mission, like survival.

An example of the latter might be when you decide to take a path through a swamp to get to your objective. You notice that leeches are draining you of your blood and you will not live long enough to make it through the swamp, so you turn around and take another path instead.

Right now, almost everyone in the West has one pet issue. They have noticed that something is broken enough to annoy them and they are crusading against it. Some are legitimate: ecocide, white genocide, anti-jobs, fear of totalitarianism, distrust of bureaucracy. The real underlying issue is that everything is broken.

The world that we call “modernity” occurred when we abolished social order — hierarchy, aristocracy, elitism, excellence — and replaced it with tolerance and equality. That inaugurated the era of mass politics, where the only way to get anything done is to manipulate most people into doing the exact same thing.

The horrors of the modern era like our wars pale in comparison to the lives of quiet desperation lived by most people of any functioning intellect. Our lives mostly consist of joyless or empty activities, and yet to do anything else is to be destroyed by the crowd. We live in fear and distrust of each other.

We can all point to our pet issues, even if they are by themselves fatal to a civilization. Perhaps, however, at the center of these issues, we can find the source of all of them. To do this, we should look at the effects of modernity upon us that have no clear single origin, such as declining sperm counts and health:

Researchers from Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine in Jerusalem announced this week that sperm count in men residing in developed countries has dropped by a whopping 50 percent over the past 40 years. They claim this alarming trend could potentially result in a decline in male health, fertility and possibly even extinction if the trend doesn’t turn around.

…After data was collected from 185 studies looking at sperm count and concentration in men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand from 1973 to 2011, researchers found that total sperm count declined by 59.3 percent and sperm concentration declined by 52.4 percent.

Data from men in South America, Asia and Africa were also examined, however, no serious decline was detected. Researchers did note that not as many studies have been conducted in these regions.

Researchers didn’t look into reasons why the drop in sperm count occurred, but noted that the phenomenon has been previously linked to factors ranging from exposure to chemicals and pesticides to lifestyle choices, including smoking, obesity and stress. They are worried that if things keep heading in this direction, the human race could be doomed.

They have listed a number of physical influences: chemical exposure, pesticides, smoking, obesity, and stress. One other is not mentioned which might be, namely the effects of caffeine on sperm volume and quality:

The literature suggests that caffeine intake, possibly through sperm DNA damage, may negatively affect male reproductive function. Evidence from epidemiological studies on semen parameters and fertility is however inconsistent and inconclusive.

Mostly however these results concerned the quality of sperm, specifically mutations, and not sperm count, which according to at least one study was unaffected. However, we should probably nonetheless be concerned that one of our most commonly ingested substances can cause mutation and reduced male reproductive function.

In the search for lowered sperm counts, we should next turn to smoking, which again gives us semi-conclusive results in a study of the impact of smoking on semen quality:

We report an apparent paradox in CS (current smokers – Ed): lower SV (seminal vessicle) volume despite higher testosterone levels. Our data suggest that smoking may negatively affect SV volume in an independent manner, as the difference between CS and non-smokers retained significance after adjusting for confounders including testosterone.

Smoking raises testosterone, but shrinks the seminal vesicles. However, this does not appear to directly lower sperm count. Thus it does not look like smoking is the influence here, despite being the first thing that every medical professional blames for just about any condition.

Obesity, on the other hand, may be a factor. Obesity can reduce sperm count and male fertility:

The results of several studies point to an increased likelihood of abnormal semen parameters among overweight men, and an elevated risk for subfertility among couples in which the male partner is obese. Obesity is, therefore, associated with a higher incidence of male factor infertility. Several mechanisms might account for the effect of obesity on male infertility, both directly and indirectly, by inducing sleep apnea, alterations in hormonal profiles (reduced inhibin B and androgen levels accompanied by elevated estrogen levels) and increased scrotal temperatures, ultimately manifesting as impaired semen parameters (decreased total sperm count, concentration and motility; increased DNA fragmentation index).

This one could be a factor in modern sperm counts falling, but it could also be a misnomer since medical staff count obesity very broadly, no pun intended. Other factors could be piggybacking on the obesity measurement.

When looking for causes of decline in sperm counts, we might also concern ourselves with environmental factors such as the influence of phthalates, parabens, persistent organic pollutants, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, heavy metals, and nuclear test radiation on male fertility, all of which look like bad news and have been increasing in use over the time that sperm counts have been dropping.

Possibly those could contribute, but other than extreme exposure, it seems unlikely that they alone could be responsible. This leaves us with a quandary: we know that despite all of the threats around us, something else is reducing sperm counts.

Looking down the list above, we see one thing we have not analyzed, stress. What do we know about the effects of stress on sperm counts (pdf)?

“Men who feel stressed are more likely to have lower concentrations of sperm in their ejaculate, and the sperm they have are more likely to be misshapen or have impaired motility,” says senior author Pam Factor-Litvak, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health. “These deficits could be associated with fertility problems.”

…Measured subjectively or objectively, life stress degraded semen quality, even after accounting for men’s concerns about their fertility, their history of reproductive health problems, or their other health issues. Workplace stress was not a factor, however the researchers say it may still affect reproductive health since men with job strain had diminished levels of testosterone. Being without a job did not improve matters. Unemployed men had sperm of lower quality than employed men, regardless of how stressed they were.

…”Stress has long been identified as having an influence on health. Our research suggests that men’s reproductive health may also be affected by their social environment,” says Teresa Janevic, PhD, the study’s first author and an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health.

Oh.

We have found quite a bit of an elephant in the room which we might call social stress, or stress arising from perceptions of one’s position in the world, coupled with existential doubts. Other sources identify this as “anxiety,” which includes both existential terror — fear of the future, lack of meaning, or insignificance — as well as concerns about one’s social status and whether the choices made were the best possible options.

Modern humanity is awash in anxiety. Societies in the past had a clear framework where there were few choices; you did what your parents did, approximately, and thus knew when you were succeeding and when you were not. Your values were those of the culture, instead of arbitrary, relativistic, or guesstimated from a haphazard reading of literature and philosophy while hung over in college.

Even more, our lives are anxious. They are designed to maximize activities that make us stressed and bored at the same time. Most of what we do at jobs is irrelevant and serves only to demonstrate loyalty. School is the same way. We sit in cars waiting to get to work or go shopping. Every product has hidden flaws, every task has a concealed trick to it, and every industry seems out to get us, taking not just money but time and energy.

When we are done with all that, there is exciting paperwork to do, or more time spent fiddling with balky technology that never seems to quiet work right. Every time someone else screws up, we the naive saps who try to do the right thing pay, while the people who make the messes, rich and poor alike, scoot away Scot free and do it somewhere else.

Another source of anxiety comes from control. The opposite of leadership, control is human herding. Those who want to be in power attempt to keep others from gaining power by regulating the methods they can use. From this comes inversion, or how every term and activity comes to mean the opposite of its original significance because the controllers have removed anything which can harm them, usually by understanding what is actually going on.

Control occurs through an external force, like a bureaucracy or management, that oversees the group and manipulates it through incentives and disincentives. This creates a situation where no one is honest because success comes from manipulating the incentives and avoiding the disincentives, usually by hiding actual activity.

It also removes the core of human beings, which is the ability to look at a situation, determine what provides the best outcome, and act on it independently. This autonomy — our terms freedom, liberty, independence, and justice are proxies for it — requires that we be able to conceive of a set of values that make life beautiful, excellent, and honest, and to have the desire for those requires us to understand life at a structural level instead of just seeing surface level parts.

Control makes people anxious because we are now all beggars and serfs, cap in hand as we approach the controllers, begging for them to approve of us and validate us. Control consists of mass manipulation, which is the only way to get things done in egalitarian times, and arises naturally from that egalitarianism, because leaders who are internal like kings create reward structures based on goal achievement and not method. Wondering whether control and the rest of the herd will validate us, which is a “black box” since we have no idea what they are actually thinking, is a huge source of anxiety.

One of the methods that implements control works by forcing us to accept insanity, which means we have humbled ourselves before the controller. If a controller insists that everyone wear red yarn around their necks and punishes anyone who does not, soon everyone in the country will be engaging in this behavior, signaling their obedience.

Our controllers, who emerge from the ravening crowd, insist that we accept insane ideas around us as if they were solid foundations, knowing that we will come to depend on them and thus will not oppose them even though they are the means to our demise. Democracy, diversity, pluralism, the welfare state, and slogans such as “diversity is our strength,” “a nation of immigrants,” and “it takes a village” are all of this nature.

All of the things to which we have a natural impulse are blunted and replaced by activities which channel our energies into the impotent and futile. Sports replace aggression; entertainment replaces thinking; promiscuity replaces family. Control operates like a parasite, taking away what we need and replacing it with proxies that in turn make us affirm control.

If we need a source of our stress and anxiety, it may come down to this unique form of misery: we are the source of control, we are controlled, and we cannot articulate what is controlling us. Even more, we are the ones perpetuating it by doing things we instinctively idealize, like working hard and contributing to the common good.

On top of that, we realize at some level that things are not well in our civilization. That means that it is on a downward trajectory, because like humans, societies are either rising or falling; there is no stasis. That means that everything we do is graffiti scribbles on a wall to be repainted, pointless.

It is no wonder that white people are killing themselves:

• Men die by suicide 3.53x more often than women.
• On average, there are 123 suicides per day.
• White males accounted for 7 of 10 suicides in 2016.
• The rate of suicide is highest in middle age — white men in particular.

…In 2016, the highest suicide rate (19.72) was among adults between 45 and 54 years of age. The second highest rate (18.98) occurred in those 85 years or older. Younger groups have had consistently lower suicide rates than middle-aged and older adults.

…In 2016, the highest U.S. suicide rate (15.17) was among Whites and the second highest rate (13.37) was among American Indians and Alaska Natives.

…In 2015, 505,507 people visited a hospital for injuries due to self-harm. This number suggests that for every reported suicide death, approximately 11.4 people visit a hospital for self-harm related injuries.

This is what happens when you create a successful society: it becomes popular, and then each of those people lay a claim to changing its direction to being more suitable to them instead of the direction itself, which involved making a thriving civilization. The two are different.

Thus hijacked, the society becomes essentially a concentration camp where the capable slave away to support those who are merely participating. In the name of keeping the group together, the competent are dominated by the incompetent because when everyone counts the same, the people who cannot otherwise distinguish themselves win by strength of superior numbers.

This problem has plagued every human society since the dawn of civilization. Hunter-gatherers avoid this problem because those who cannot keep up generally are left behind, and when food is rare, there is no point subsidizing someone who contributes nothing.

Philosophers and economists refer to the root condition of this situation as the free rider problem:

The “free rider problem” occurs in situations in which a person derives a “positive externality” from the actions of another — that is, a benefit that he did not pay for. This occurs in situations where the beneficial effect of an action is “nonexcludable,” meaning that the benefits cannot be withheld from people who had nothing to do with the action.

… it is a “problem” only when compared to what might have been done instead — a problem of allegedly inefficient underproduction of the good in question. In other words, the problem is that, if not for the nonexcludability of the good, things could potentially have been even better.

In other words, it is a parasitism problem: nutrition/wealth is taken from someone who could do better with it.

Free riders are by themselves not a problem, but when free riding becomes the norm, society has effected a wealth transfer from the competent to the incompetent. This produces a death spiral from which none can escape.

Living in a death-cycle civilization causes anxiety enough on its own, but the even bigger problem may be that it also deprives people of guidance and answers they need in order to be able to address existential questions. When you cannot trust society, your parents, or your friends, you are entirely alone.

To be alone is to make choices based on what you know, which for most people under fifty is very little. This causes people to exist in a state of constant doubt about the choices that they have made, especially when they seem to be socially acceptable and what everyone else is doing. Joining the beast is rarely good.

Free riders find a supporter in control. Control adores free riders because these handy little parasites immobilize those who are competent and would otherwise notice and combat control. Control uses regulation of method to make society serve its controllers which in turn creates unjust servitude which is broken not because it is servitude, which most people deserve anyway, but because it wastes their energy on dying societies.

Others have noted how control makes people self-hating:

The Oslo syndrome is the name used by Jewish writer Kenneth Levin to specifically describe the psychology of Jews who hate Jews, but the concept applies to all groups as it is a basic human psychological phenomenon which is related both to the Stockholm syndrome and the Battered Child syndrome.

Essentially, what happens is that when a specific group of people is subjected to constant hatred, demonization and abuse, some in the group will often have their spirits broken and be beaten down like whipped dogs, and they’ll lose self-esteem and group-esteem, and feel worthlessness and be full of despair.

These despairing individuals, with the Oslo syndrome, won’t blame those who are harming them, but will actually take the side of those harming them against others in their own group.

Oslo Syndrome is similar not only to Stockholm Syndrome but also to PTSD and disassociation, both of which are essentially varieties or neurosis, or confusing cause with effect. This abuse pathology arises from stress and anxiety which resemble PTSD in their pathology.

Worse, the phenomenon of control imprints all beneath it. Controllers control citizens; citizens then control their families and each other. If you wonder why parents withhold affection unless their children do exactly what they want, friends are passive-aggressive, and people in general act oblivious to the byproducts of their activity yet confront others to demand to be recognized as equal and validated, you have spotted the control-virus in the wild.

In summary, the moribund Western Civilization is killing Western European people through stress and anxiety. We still feel obligated to this civilization, so we hate ourselves for being slaves who affirm our own slavery. This is why our sperm counts are dropping as our suicide rates rise.

Tags: anxiety, environmental toxins, nicotine, obesity, sperm count, stress, suicide rate, tobacco, western civilization