Collapse of Eros - The Biopolitical Quietude of the West

> "We've been made to believe that the greatest fight of our generation is to destroy everything our forefathers left us: tradition, privacy, sovereignty, the free market, and free speech. > > By betraying the legacy of our ancestors, we've set ourselves on a path toward self-destruction - moral, intellectual, economic, and ultimately biological." > > — Pavel Durov, Telegram founder - 2025 --- ## The Rise of the Managerial State [[Moral Code of Modernity|The late 20th to early 21st century West, while ostensibly advancing toward “freedom,” has restructured around systemic desire inhibition.]] Foucault's sovereign “right to kill” has been replaced by a managerial “obligation to optimize,” marking the transition to a _biopolitical regime_ (see _Discipline and Punish_, *The Birth of Biopolitics*). Every institution—school, workplace, medical authority, digital platform—functions now as an apparatus of _conformity reproduction_, a self perpetuation of the status quo, rather than the manifestation of a higher vision. In the pre-industrial household economy, production, status, and kin life were coextensive: sexual dimorphism and continuous maternal investment generated visible reciprocity under shared risk. As value from home to market domestic labor lost its status; Men’s work migrated from household to routinized factory lines or administrative paper, while the housewife role was commoditized into monotony and institutionalized isolation. This diaspora of recognition, prestige, led to the first wave of feminism which was largely supported and allowed women to enter the workforce, vote, and strive for an equity of rights. [^functionalist] [^functionalist]: This is a functionalist critique, which will be clouded from a modern political perspective. This argument is not that the past was "better" to live in, it merely talks about the differences. It also never says, women entering the workforce was bad, please do not read it this way as it will be incredibly detrimental. If we look at Rome, the parallels from 500BCE to 500CE show many of the same underlying functions exist in our modern context, and perhaps were more equitable. For example, the richest private Romans had a relative wealth of 330,333x the average Roman citizen. With a modern average wage of $50,000, their modern relative wealth would be ~$16.5 Billion. Whereas Bezos’ relative wealth is 3.72 million times greater than the average person. ~$186 Billion. No one should argue that living in 0CE Rome would be preferable than today. The point is the function and contextualization of what was and should be considered normal, from our skewed perspective built on whatever biases we inherit. This labour surplus, which effectively cut wages in half[^EconomicArgument], also led to elite over-production and a recomposing of culture; when such change arrives without mediating institutions capable of screening, disciplining, and channeling its destructive externalities, ungoverned "toxic" behaviors predictably gain an edge.[^MediatingInstitutionsNuance] Male aggression tends more often to be **overt and coalitional**, that when mediated **incentivize risk, win wars, and build teams**.[^MaleTraits] Female aggression tends more often to be **indirect and reputational**, policing norms via reputation, gossip, and shaming.[^FemaleTraits] [^EconomicArgument]: When [women entered the workforce in ~1930s there was growth in GDP.](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-history-of-womens-work-and-wages-and-how-it-has-created-success-for-us-all/) However, the affects of such a demographic change take at least one or two generations to be seen. Only now, in 1990s did the number of women in the workforce reach ~45-47%. While GDP did grow, wages didn't leading to the modern dual-income family. This can likely be explained by legacy positions of power, those with more masculine traits, being able to suppress the new due to higher rates of agreeableness and a lack of coordination. It's worth noting that in this case, what it means to "feel rich," matters more. This feeling is dependant on not only what you have, but what others don't. [^MaleTraits]: **Overt/physical aggression (and real-world violence) skews male on average.** Meta-analytic work finds higher _direct/physical_ aggression among males, with the sex gap smaller under strong provocation. Large-scale crime data show that most homicide victims are male (and perpetrators, too). [See Archer’s 2004 meta-analyses and reviews; UNODC/OWID for global baselines.](https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.8.4.291) **Coalitional orientation / “male-warrior” pattern.** [Experiments](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01703.x) indicate men, more than women, ramp up in-group cooperation under intergroup threat (public-goods paradigms), consistent with the “male-warrior” hypothesis. Complementary work shows humans track coalitional alliances and that alliance cues can override other social categories. **“Same energy, mediated”: risk-taking & team building.** Across domains, [meta-analysis and behavioral-econ evidence](https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.3.367) show men take more risks on average; in finance-like tasks women invest less (interpreted as higher risk aversion). Hormonal correlates (testosterone) have been reported, with debate around interpretation. [^FemaleTraits]: **Relational/indirect aggression and reputation management.** Foundational developmental studies identify **relational aggression** (gossip, exclusion, rumor) and associate it [more with girls/women in many contexts;](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1995.tb00900.x) broad reviews unify “indirect/relational/social” aggression as one construct. Evolutionary accounts argue such tactics reduce retaliation risk and are effective in intrasexual competition. Also note: the _average_ sex difference in indirect aggression is **small/trivial** in many datasets. It is more the neurotic / outliers in which we are concerned, for example the small percentage of psychopaths, or more accurately anti-social persons. **How reputation/gossip police norms & enable coordination.** Laboratory studies show **gossip and ostracism** reliably increase cooperation via partner selection and reputation salience; [theory on **indirect reciprocity** formalizes how reputations sustain large-scale cooperation.](https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816840) **De-escalation/affiliation tendencies.** [The **tend-and-befriend** account](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8706506) proposes that (on average) females cope with threat via caregiving and affiliative networking, which functionally de-escalate conflict; personality data align with women scoring higher on **Agreeableness** (norm-smoothing, conflict management). [^MediatingInstitutionsNuance]: **Lack of Mediating Institutions** is also [why Democracy fails abroad / within different social contexts.](https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2025-01/Institutions%2C%20Technology%20and%20Prosperity.pdf) Every culture has it's pros / cons, without institutions to mediate those cons, the end result is insanity, the questioning of [how we got so far without realizing.](https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/regret-belittling-men-63-ended-up-alone-3569366) It is more the neurotic / outliers in which we are concerned, for example the small percentage of psychopaths, or more accurately anti-social persons. The most extreme of a population often dictate its direction, billionaires, serial killers, religious extremists, etc... all disproportionately affect the realities of their populations. These ungoverned behaviours of indirect violence led to the rise a bureaucratic-managerial class which has a feminized[^demographicshift] preference for direct conflict avoidance. Through proceduralization, accountability is spread throughout the organization, which mitigates individual responsibility, interpersonal conflict, and direct violence.[^IndirectAggression] Since direct outcomes and standards become unattributable, this lead to a moral system built off how people feel emotionally rather than codified on intent. Offense becomes "in the eye of the beholder," allowing people to claim victim status to rise in social standing. These Individual "truths" destroys any sense of shared identity, which in turn destroys society's ability to coordinate or work together. [^DemographicShift]: The demographic shift is the ideological shift, they are the same thing. For example, take critical mass theory in sociodynamics and social network / control theory. The argument is not "A led to B which led to C." It's that once the demographic composition of the elite-producing and governance institutions reached a certain tipping point, inevitably culture shifted to reflect the aggregate psychological traits of the new majority. Furthermore, the adverse affects of traits didn't have the proper institutions in place to mediate them. The rise of a conflict-avoidant, reputational bureaucracy isn't an unintended consequence of women entering the workforce; it is the direct and predictable expression of a system now numerically dominated by a group that, on average, prefers those modes of social organization [^IndirectAggression]: I suggest watching [this Dr. K video on indirect aggression.](https://youtu.be/DL5qDFDttps?si=Do0KhPaEXon_fo4G) He goes over a diagnostic framework built from scientific literature and clinical practice to help victims of female bullying. The aggression is indirect, based on exclusion, rumors, and communication-based attacks with **plausible deniability**. The goal is **social isolation** and the primary tool is **reputational damage**. This pattern is driven by a high sensitivity to retaliation, which is why the attacks must be deniable, characterized by: **Diffused Accountability:** Dr. K describes how the bully uses the group to diffuse responsibility. "It's not me that's bullying you, it's the group." This is the same principle as a bureaucracy where no single individual is responsible for a decision. **Plausible Deniability:** The core of indirect aggression. "I wasn't hitting on your boyfriend, I was just walking by." This mirrors a procedural system where one can always claim to be "just following the rules," avoiding any personal intent or responsibility. **Weaponized Victimhood (Retaliatory Humiliation):** Dr. K describes the knockout punch: when the victim calls out the behavior, the bully flips the script. "Can you believe how crazy she is? We forget to invite her once and she has a meltdown." This is the precise mechanism behind the essay's claim that offense becomes "in the eye of the beholder," allowing people to claim victim status to gain social power. Thus our modern state has become a land optimized for the reproductive *suppression* of its citizens: a digital simulacrum of relationality, pornography as satiety-without-contact, gamified consumer culture as libido deferral. The mimetic substrate of sexual competition—honour, risk, courtship, scarcity—is overwritten by _frictionless surplus_. Desire ceases to move because there is no external referent that is _not_ already consumed by the algorithmic mirror. ## Androgyny & Eros In the post-teleological information age, prestige metrics are simultaneously inflated (Instagram followers) and deflated (everyone is “special”), leading to a deadlock: mimetic rivalry without resolution, status hunger without shared ritual. As noted in Henrich’s _The Secret of Our Success_ and Turchin’s _Ages of Discord_, prestige must be _relative_, _earned_, and _differentiated_ to serve its socio-reproductive function. The Enlightenment abolished divine right but did not replace it with a metaphysically sufficient anthropology. Liberal democracy, founded on procedural equality, eventually lost its telos beyond inclusion. In absence of sacred difference, all distinctions—between male and female, child and adult, sacred and profane—become subject to bureaucratic flattening. The result is not balance but **disintegration of archetype**. > The androgynous citizen-worker replaces the father, the patriarch, the priest. In its place stands a distributed network of credentialed actors who administer normativity without telos. ![[画画的肠肠-xintong-chen-eros-female-2023-6-14.jpg]] > *Note: In [[Symposium - Son of Love & War|Plato's Symposium,]] Aristophanes presents a myth where primordial humans were three sexes: male, female, and androgynous (a combination of both.) These androgynous beings were too powerful, as punishment, Zeus split them in two. Eros is born from this act, becoming the embodiment of the desire to return to that complete state.*[^Symposium] [^Symposium]: The original androgynous being was powerful and whole, a threat to the gods. However, there are always trade offs, in modernity we could say that we are more powerful than ever; [[Friedrich Nietzsche - Prophet of Fracture#"God is dead"|ideologically we even "killed" god]] and created [[The Tower of Babel - מִגְדַּל בָּבֶל#Our Universal Language|a universal language (math) as well as our towers of babel.]] However how this ends, note the depression rates, birth rates, etc all show that this is hubris long term. At least for now, if we are unable to articulate the problem, we will surely fall. In prior epochs, male and female were not equal because they were _complementary_: two poles orbiting a metaphysical center *[(hieros gamos)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieros_gamos)*. When modernity declared war on “essentialism,” it made myth _unspeakable_ without stigma. The **secular Western moral order**, influenced by therapeutic culture and trauma-centric epistemology (see _The Righteous Mind_, Haidt), now enshrines **harm avoidance** as its supreme ethic. But this ethic cannot sustain eros. Eros _requires_ risk, asymmetry, and initiation. A society that pathologizes masculine assertiveness, and commodifies feminine intimacy, generates not equity—but **ontological sterility**. Women prizing status, ambition, and assertiveness in men, while men prize youth and physical beauty in women. This isn't a social construct to be managed away; it's a biological reality. Ideologies like postmodernism (which denies objective truth) and radical feminism (which denies biological sex differences) are "idea pathogens" that hijack our thinking. They function by inverting the relation between material reality → phenomenological definitions.[^KantRealms] In denying reality, it than allows for the festering of any manner of fantasy, with those who perpetuate it dictating the "truth" to those now unable to discern it from their own experiences. [^KantRealms]: ![[kantian-realms.webp]] Falling birthrates are not caused by “careerism” or “housing costs.” These are rationalizations for a much deeper collapse: **the withdrawal of shared myth**. [Across East Asia, Europe, and North America, the fertility collapse is nearly perfectly correlated with the loss of communal telos:](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN) no mythos of destiny, no multigenerational lineage, no eschatological horizon. [^ManagerialState]Children require belief in tomorrow. In a culture where tomorrow is a threat (climate panic), or meaningless (consumer accelerationism), natality appears absurd. [^ManagerialState]: The obsession with finding purely economic solutions (housing costs, childcare credits, etc.) is itself a symptom of the "managerial state," which seeks to "optimize" life through procedural fixes. It is excellent at solving technical problems but is incapable of addressing questions of meaning, purpose, or telos. Therefore, it reduces the profound crisis of civilizational reproduction to a spreadsheet problem. To do otherwise—to admit that the root cause is a spiritual void or a "withdrawal of shared myth"—would be to admit the failure of its own foundational presuppositions (secularism, individualism, procedural liberalism). The inverse correlation between national income and fertility is not an economic phenomenon. Instead, it maps the global adoption of the "Western paradigm;" **High-Income Nations (TFR ~1.4-1.6):** These countries are deeply embedded in the secular, individualistic, managerial worldview which is inherently anti-natal. Their low fertility is the expected outcome of losing a transcendent, collective purpose beyond individual optimization and harm avoidance. **Low-Income Nations (TFR ~4.0-4.7):** Their high fertility persists not because of poverty, but because their societies often retain pre-modern, traditional, and communal structures. The "Arab World" for example has a TFR of 3.1. They have not yet fully adopted the cultural presuppositions of the late-modern West. One can expect their fertility will fall precipitously if they "develop" along the same cultural path. **Israel (TFR 2.9): The Exception that Proves the Rule:** As a high-income, technologically advanced, OECD member nation, standard demographic models predict Israel should have a low fertility rate comparable to Europe's. Its status as a dramatic outlier demands an explanation beyond economics. Other "[Fragile and conflict affected situations](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=F1)" also have an FTR of 4.2, suggesting war acts to ritualize shared beliefs (a sort of societal trauma bonding.) The existential tone of [[11HE – Gun, Globe & Cross – (1,000–2,000 CE)|11HE]] is thus _quiet_: not the cataclysm of nuclear fire, but the slow entropy of unchosen barrenness.[^YouthDating] In Hannah Arendt’s _The Human Condition_, natality is the root of political action—a faith that the world is worth entering. Its disappearance is a political crisis disguised as a personal choice. [^YouthDating]: **"Nearly half of young men aren’t dating" - American Institute for Boys and Men:** This not only effects the current birthrate, but also the development of individuals into well rounded personalities. Its a double order for dooming a society if left unchecked. So the question becomes not only why women aren't giving birth, but also why men aren't dating. A complex question which requires not only an equally complex answer, but one rooted in a sense of belonging and genuine shared prestige. ![[衤今禾口 - 帝釈天 - 2022.jpg]] --- ## Mimetic Collapse & Prestige In every society, models of admiration structure sexual competition and social cohesion. [[The Nature of Desire, Rivalry and Myth|Human desire is triangular, mediated, imitative.]] Where previously models were rooted in proximity and archetype (the brave warrior, the wise father, the beautiful maiden), today they are decoupled and algorithmically amplified.[^ToxicMasculinity] [^ToxicMasculinity]: The concept of "toxic masculinity" is, in Saad's view, a parasitic idea that pathologizes the very traits that are evolutionarily attractive and societally necessary: ambition, assertiveness, dominance, and risk-taking. Mass media creates **mimetic saturation**. A teenage boy no longer competes with his local village or school peers; he competes with curated avatars of status—celebrities, influencers, pornographic idols—while being socially atomized and existentially irrelevant. [^Porn] This mimetic inflation yields two opposite reactions: _withdrawal_ (NEETs, hikikomori, incels), or _over-conformity_ (hyper-neurotic careerism, ideological virtue signalling). [^Porn]: A Man's value directly relates to his capacity to take on [[The Nature of Risk, Wealth, & Virtue|risk & uncertainty.]] Porn is a "supernormal stimulus" that hijacks the male brain's evolved desire for sexual variety and visual stimuli, providing an infinite supply with zero risk or effort. Women, in turn, face an equally brutal landscape of expectations. On one hand, feminism promises power, agency, and freedom. On the other, the evolutionary substrate of sexual selection—hypergamy—remains intact: most women still desire men of equal or greater status. But as women rise economically, the number of such men shrinks, creating what demographers call the “**mating gradient problem**.” Feminism unshackled the feminine from economic dependence—but failed to offer a _new telos_ of womanhood beyond career mirroring. This is not to lament the rise of female agency—indeed, in tribal and pre-industrial contexts, matrilineal authority often balanced male hierarchy. Rather, the problem is **telos drift**: the absence of a clearly communicable model of what a flourishing woman or man _is_, _for_, or _toward_. The postmodern West has not abolished hierarchy; it has merely obscured it under layers of procedural bureaucracy and ideological denial. Masculinity is not “toxicity” nor merely an outdated social construct, and Femininity is not passivity nor purely domestic. Men and women continue to compete and desire—but with no coherent telos. [^AViableFuture] If we continue to treat humans as economic units and gender as negotiable software, the end is not oppression—but **silence**. A world without mothers and fathers, without sons and daughters, is not liberated—it is post-human. ![[衤今禾口 - 不见岳 - 2022.png]] [^AViableFuture]: With a mirror held up to a civilization that forgot why it began, perhaps the path will reappear; **New prestige economies** that reward generativity, rather than virality. **Ritual re-entry points** for sexual differentiation that do not pathologize it. **Post-liberal mythologies** that sacralize both lineage and transcendence, without reverting to authoritarianism. **Institutional structures** (guilds, orders, rites, schools) that channel male aggression and female selectivity into **communal flourishing**, not zero-sum rivalry.