Gen-Z is a very polarized generation. While on the whole it leans left, we've also seen a huge generational pushback against wokeism, mostly carried out by young men.

I think Gen-Z has a lot of potential for changing the country in a positive direction. Zoomers hate Biden and overwhelmingly hold views that go against the mainstream establishment framing, whether on the left or right. There's almost no such thing as a 20 year old neoliberal. This is going to create a HUGE shift in the future. From my observations and talking to politically engaged people my age, I think there will be some major changes:

Zoomers do not support Israel regardless of political affiliation. Aside from the few with Jewish heritage, Gen-Z is either pro-Palestine or completely against further engagement with the middle east.

Zoomers are oddly enough more spiritual and less materially focused. There's a generational burnout going on at the moment ("young people don't wanna work!") and Gen-Z is way more focused on quality of life than quantity of possessions. You hear a lot more women aspiring to be full time mothers one day and men putting a greater emphasis on knowledge and self-improvement. Zoomers are embracing the slow life and rejecting the fast pace of our highly competitive economy.

There's an overwhelming feeling that America is getting worse, less livable, and less worth defending as far as it's current system goes. No Zoomer thinks America is headed in the right direction under Biden. Period. Aside from the rare Democrat party activist, zoomers have no faith in the establishment whatsoever.

Gen-Z Republicans grew up watching Trump, and that's the standard they hold all politicians to. The neocons, the holdouts from days gone by are increasingly marginalized and considered indefensible. Their influence will evaporate as the newer generation of voters takes over and starts getting active in primaries.

Zoomers are revolutionaries. It's like the 60s all over again, except this time the establishment is weak and completely incompetent. Big change is on the horizon. The gatekeepers have very little influence over a generation that grew up watching peers on social media rather than a few controlled TV stations. Big ideas are popping up left and right and there's a big conversation going on that transcends our usual understanding of politics. People are discussing what it means to be a human being, what really matters in life, and how we can build a better world that takes account for what we value most. The era of accepting the status quo is over and Zoomers are on the forefront of what's to come. We're experiencing the dawn of a new vision for this country, one that's people-focused, compassionate, and a bit more understanding. If these tendencies are shaped properly and integrated in a more practical, realistic way, I think the future will look oddly bright.

She's the only Trump supporter in our immediate family and everyone was talking about how Trump supporters are stupid and evil at dinner. Now she feels really rejected and thinks our whole family doesn't love her. It made her cry.

From the earliest moments I was aggressively socialized to accommodate others and never take my own side. Now as a man I'm supposed to go out there and succeed in this highly competitive world? It's a cruel joke.

I developed earlier than most kids. By the time I was 2 years old I was already talking more like an adult and learning to read my first words. The teachers didn't understand this and resented me for not acting my age. I was always bored in school and hated the way I was treated for doing anything that felt remotely natural. No stretching, no talking, no exercising my own discretion or being creative. I thought it was ridiculous that I had to ask to use the restroom or drink water. I was always getting in trouble for things that no adult would ever think twice about criticizing another adult for.

Going to public school is like being raised in a communist country. Teachers use their age difference and institutional backing to bully kids into non-existence. They obviously resented us. They didn't want to be there. We were always the problem for them just by existing and they wanted to mold us to be as small as possible so they didn't have to "deal" with us as human beings.

What does that do to a person's mind?

Virtually all of the traits I hate about myself can be traced back to school. The people-pleasing, the passivity, the fear of not being in control of my environment. I often hesitate to take initiative or advocate for myself because every time I did that as a child I was squashed by people bigger and more respected than me. Eventually I learned not to trust myself. I learned that the only way to survive is to mindlessly fall in line and follow directions. It's been a very hard thing to unlearn.

I think a lot of the woke stuff we see is actually a backlash to this. Schools were so overbearing in the 2010s, the people coming out of that environment just want to assert some form of identity for themselves. Sometimes that shows up in the form identifying as a cat or having crazy colored hair. It's sad that so many young minds have been ruined by modern schools.

On the night of the eclipse my mom and I had a very similar dream about an electromagnetic pulse wiping out the whole modern world. I saw someone else post about it and it got me thinking, is this really how it all ends? It would be kind of fitting. Almost like a new flood ig.

I almost wouldn't mind if it brought a new normal that doesn't suck. I'd give up everything if it means being able to start a family free from the way the world is now.

Gen-Z is a weird generation in the scheme of things. We date far less than any previous generation. Something like 50% of men between the ages of 18 and 25 say they've never had sex or been in a relationship before. The rates for workforce participation have also been steadily decreasing every year as young people decide to abandon the workforce and stop looking for work in general. Zoomers are falling behind on every major milestone from getting their drivers license to having their first kiss.

We've also seen a major increase in things like anxiety, PTSD, BPD, Bipolar etc. It's a stereotype that zoomers lack resilience and get burned out easily. Normal things seem to negatively impact them in ways that make life difficult to live.

I'm a zoomer. I know a bunch of zoomers. Many of us are finding ourselves unable to cope with adult life. It impacts both men and women in large numbers.

Hot take: Zoomers aren't just being lazy assholes, they actually have some form of autism. Idk if it's from the vaccines or the food or something else but there's definitely a very different psychological form emerging with each generation that hasn't existed with these numbers in the past. Young people genuinely have a much lower threshold for pain and exhaustion and need a lot of time to recharge after doing anything social or productive. They're afraid of the world and generally feel unequipped. This isn't everyone, but it's a big enough percentage to seriously impact society.

I think they will ultimately have a lot of influence. Society can't function when as much as half of the population isn't cut out for it. We're already seeing institutions change with safe spaces and stuff like that. I think society is slowly adapting to the reality that a huge percentage of our population now has neurodivergent traits. The world will look very different when they outnumber more adaptive types.

When mom and dad both have to work:

Kids are eating processed foods because the adults don't have time to make a meal

Kids are spending an insane amount of time watching inappropriate content on YouTube

No one to drive them to extracurriculars

No one to help with homework or monitor what they're learning in school

No one to give them the basic affection you'd expect from a parent

Then conservative parents get upset when their kids end up woke. Maybe that's because they absorbed the values of the people who actually raised them.

All this stuff has gotten me interested in actually trying to understand the occult on it's own terms.

From what I've been able to piece together so far, the occult sciences are technically as morally neutral as any other branch of knowledge. Magic belongs in the same category as medicine or persuasion, it can be used for good or evil depending on the user.

Occult practices are inherently connected to a worldview. Practitioners can be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Pagan, or people who follow "left-hand paths" or Chaos Magik. The later is basically what we would recognize as a leftist worldview.

Chaos Magik practitioners place their individual will at the center of the universe and use occult means to break down social norms. Chaos Magik is essentially postmodern because it starts from the idea that truth is invented by individuals rather than existing on any objective basis. It sees belief as a tool for attaining power, not a product of knowing the truth. Practitioners of Chaos Magik do not recognize morality, authority or hierarchy. They believe no act or idea should be off the table and actively transgress the standards of society. This is overwhelmingly the occult school that our elites belong to.

The problem with the occult is basically the problem with any sort of power. When occult power is used in service of God, it can actually be a force for good. When the practitioner uses the occult in service of his own personal glory, it becomes demonic. Subordination to a higher power is what differentiates "right-hand" from "left-hand" occult practices.

It's important to note that the occult is an extremely vast discipline that has influenced all major religions including Christianity. The use of symbolism, liturgy, and mysticism is not inherently evil or suspect any more than owning a gun makes someone a killer. Like anything else it depends on the individual's belief system.

Tangible instances of the occult in practice include: the placebo effect, the concept of political legitimacy, use of language to denote concepts, the art of suggestion in advertisements, musical chord progressions to convey emotion, subliminal messaging, synchronicity, imagination in general, dream analysis and interpretation, hypnosis, rhetorical priming, etc.

To put it simply: the occult deals with the inner life of a human being and how we organize and interpret sensory stimulation. It also deals with our relation to higher planes of reality, but that's a lot harder to explain.

They say conservatives are more likely to be sensors. Have you tried it?

I got INFJ

Even if you're not a fan of the genre I think it's culturally important and worth the time.

The album was made in 2021 during a very turbulent period in Kanye's life. He was going through a religious transformation at the time and you can really hear it in the album. It's almost like a baptism of hiphop in a strange sort of way. I thought it was really uplifting. It subverted all the archetypes associated with rap and black culture.

Link to the full album

Ben Shapiro recently said that social security should be abolished and people should be expected to work until they die.

My first thought was how stupid it was to say something like that during an election year. The Republican base is elderly people and a lot of them rely on social security. Expecting 80 year olds to have to work to survive is a pretty grim vision for the country and one that nobody would vote for.

On the other hand, interest on our debt is probably going to be larger than the GDP way before I'll be eligible for social security. The program seems like a product of another time that's practically doomed to fail eventually. It's a ponzi scheme, but it's one that people are counting on.

At the same time, Ben is the last person who should be talking about cutting social security while advocating we send more money to Ukraine and Israel. Benefits that actually go back to the taxpayers are the last things that should ever be cut. But our ruling class is set on sending as much money as possible overseas. They'll never have the political capital to get rid of social security without committing electoral suicide. That's just my thought.

I feel like this is an extremely unpopular opinion but I really don't think republicanism was a step forward for humanity.

Monarchy is the most intuitive form of government. People tend to take care of what they own, and politicians have no incentive to leave anything better for the next generation because they really have no stake in their country. Their legacy dies with them.

A monarchy with constitutional (and familial) checks and balances is vastly preferable to a republic where the foreign interests run free and loot the taxpayers. It's pure and much simpler. No Congress, no Supreme Court, no ridiculous sham elections. Everyone knows who's in charge and what the rules are.

The earliest president I can really remember is Obama so I can't recall a time when it didn't feel like America was in decline. Everyone says it was better before but it's pretty hard to imagine a world without wokeness.

I understand that what I'm about to say is probably out of step with the majority opinion here but I think this view is still worth expressing and debating. I believe this problem is a reality that desperately needs to be addressed.

The country of South Korea is said to be facing "national extinction" due to their extremely low birthrates. At the current rate, the next generation will be roughly one third the size of the current one, shrinking the South Korean population far below anything necessary for the current infrastructure to function. This is a huge problem that no one is talking about.

I brought it up to my friend and his dad who are from South Korea and they made some interesting points as to why this is happening. They said:

• South Koreans face an extremely demanding work life. Now that women are almost universally forced to work, motherhood has become nearly impossible. South Korean women simply don't have the time to fulfil their duties as both an employee and a mother.

• South Korea is a very market driven society. Having a child is seen as a determent to personal economic security. Parents are also sometimes discriminated against in the workplace.

• No woman is ever raised with motherhood in mind anymore. Before Korean independence, raising the next generation was considered a sacred role in line with the old Confucian way of thinking. Since then, the role of woman has shifted from motherhood to economic productivity. Women who decide to be mothers used to be cherished, but now they're considered lazy or wasting their time. Being a parent is seen as a senseless luxury.

• South Korean media promotes feminine men and "sexy, fast" lifestyles over more grounded and family oriented ones. Masculinity has almost no presence in South Korean entertainment.

All these elements seem to come together into a common narrative: the mechanisms that increase economic productivity are detrimental to the long-term existence of society.

Now I think of our own country. I see how young people are going to college or hustling instead of getting married. I see how a basic starter home is unaffordable to anyone under the age of 40 in most places. I see the amount of men giving up on life in massive numbers and the women who don't seem to think the vast majority of men are worth marrying in their current financial state. It's a slow moving disaster. Our country and the entire western-inspired world (just about every first world country) is a generation or two away from total demographic implosion. Imagine if half the people around you disappeared today and what that would do to your local economy. Now imagine that happening on such a large scale.

So what's the solution? Socialist countries all seem to have the same problems, along with the million others that come from economic planning. If we look to "healthy" countries, they seem to have a lot of qualities that would repulse the majority in the west. They're "repressive" and underdeveloped according to the standards we've cultivated for ourselves.

So it's a real catch-22. We like the lifestyle that comes with the modern world, but that lifestyle is not feasible in the long term. What tends to survive is static, small scale economies that take part in an unchanging social order. The economy only survives when it's forced to be part of a complete image of society. But that's a hard sell.

I'm just rambling at this point but I wanted to put my thoughts out there to hopefully improve on them. This is just where I'm at right now. Hopefully there's a better option I'm not aware of.

Maybe I'm just being a triggered snowflake here but it's kind of annoying when people who became millionaires talking in front of a screen all day make fun of zoomers for being stuck at a low station in life. This isn't a great economy to be starting life under and taken all together, it's hard not to feel for the blue hair college girl crying about how she'll never own a home. Are they really wrong?

I don't get why so many conservatives get angry when young people understandably resent being tax slaves.

Conservatives tend to be more practically-minded thinkers. Many will look at what's in front of them and resort to the tried and true methods of addressing the situation, focusing on what is rather than what could be. They're in touch with the present and favor simplicity over grand ideas and big narratives.

Leftists on the other hand tend to have a very different approach towards viewing the world. They're more likely to be dreamers, and their dreams might not even resemble their practical experiences. Leftists are abstract thinkers. They pick up on subtle narratives and constantly look for the origins of what they see around them. Conservatives ask: what is? Leftists ask: what could this mean?

Now unfortunately, most people outsource their opinions to third parties.

The "big" questions in life tend to be answered by whichever institutions are strong enough to inculcate the population. When institutions are weak, those big questions become dynamic once again and are answered most strongly by the dreamers of the world. When people no longer trust their priests and government officials, they turn to the artists, writers, and philosophers for answers.

Conservative thought patterns are highly valuable when society is stable and the big questions seem settled. When things are dynamic, we see them falter time and time again. That's why the "right" has been playing defense for the last thousand years or so. People who are stuck in their ways will never win when everything is in flux. The future will belong to whoever has the vision and competence to execute that vision on the world, while the rest will remain helpless bystanders to history.

So what can "the right" do to address this?

First, I think it's important to focus on principles rather than concrete historical manifestations of them. At the heart of conservatism is the proposition that there is a way that stands above historical contingency, given to us by our creator. Liberals believe reality is invented by man, conservatives believe reality is invented by God. Even conservative leaning atheists will follow this general pattern of thought.

What we're lacking today is a strong civilizational worldview. Why do we do the things we do? Why does reality as we know it exist? What should the future look like? These questions go unanswered when a civilization has died. They're answered once again just before the start of a new cycle. Whoever can answer these questions with the utmost confidence and paint a picture of the world, they will set the tone for generations to come.