Ross

I think you all have your fingers on the pulse of a real problem in today's society. Alienation and pessimism in young adults is very real. I’d suggest that underneath it lies an even deeper wound: the loss of a shared sense of purpose. The traditional rites of passage you mentioned worked not simply because they were dramatic transitions, but because they oriented young men toward a role and a core telos within their community. In modern society, we’ve largely dismantled the structures that once helped people orient their lives: family expectations (marriage and kids are increasingly not seen as central life goals and careers force us to continuously sever family relationships), community traditions, and even widely accepted narratives about what counts as a good life.

This is where I think Aristotelian notions of virtue, especially as retrieved by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue, could be helpful. MacIntyre argues that we’ve inherited fragments of moral language without the coherent traditions that once gave them meaning. As a result, people end up oscillating between relativism and ungrounded dogmatism, never really knowing how to direct their energies toward a common good. For someone young, talented, and restless, that vacuum can be devastating and I can imagine they feel listless.

Reintroducing a sense of purpose doesn’t mean imposing rigid conformity, but it does mean recovering the idea that human life has ends proper to it: flourishing, excellence in practices, contribution to the community; that can order ambition and give structure to energy. Without that, alienation becomes inevitable, and destructive outlets more tempting.

In other words, I think you’re right that alienation is at the heart of our present crisis, but alienation itself is downstream of this deeper dislocation from purpose. And unless we can give young people something truly worth living (and even suffering) for, the “new American tragedy” you describe will only continue to play out.


I don't post on this message board much anymore ever since fatherhood claimed me, but I do still lurk. People have been very complementary in this thread so I figured I'd do the same specifically towards crazy4lsu. I think we'd end up having very different metaphysical groundings to our value systems and where they emerge and what we ought to do with them in the public sphere (I have issues with the Rawls/pragmatic school of thought you embraced earlier in this thread) but I don't think anyone can deny you are incredibly well versed on a variety of scientific, philosophical, and historical topics and your contributions to this board are a very welcome break from the tedium of what most of the internet offers.

If my holdings are able to pay for my house, I feel like I’d be a fool not to do it. It’d lock in a ton of profit and I would no longer have a mortgage payment and would feel free to have my wife move to part time and spend more time with the kid. That legit may happen next year.

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Ross staying completely out everything says...he's either dead, doesn't give a shite, is enjoying site traffic, or his doing his job MODERATING

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exploring the joys of new fatherhood these days, so my bandwidth in life to stay in the weeds of internet drama has been dramatically reduced

I do have the general opinion that the one rule I ever historically attempted to enforce on this board was I did not want personal attacks to be the norm, but I always felt good natured ribbing was fine. This means you have to invoke some judgement calls, and to avoid controversy I veered towards only intervening when people really crossed a line. The ultimate goal is to promote good natured discussion surrounding Auburn sports and to avoid endless petty squabbles. I think this board did pretty well for many years with avoiding feuds, but I do think at some point the dynamics shifted. The role of the moderation group in my eyes is to not let those feuds derail threads actually seeking to have meaningful conversation and not to let the feuds get overly heated here. At the end of the day, it’s always going to be a judgement call on where the line is on this kind of thing.

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This forum in general is sad

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It’s a never ending trainwreck that’s hard to look away from

That chart pretty well tracks with my experiences on this board

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Trust me...when you see the name on a post and you know they are anti-Trump, woke, a Democrat, a girly boy, etc. just hit the down vote like I do and don't bother to read their dribble. They live for the attention since obviously they didn't get it as a child

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Does it concern you that if everyone adopted your worldview we’d just have groups of echo chambers that gradually lose the ability to even communicate with one another?

Man all this long air travel seems like it’s gonna be hell for the student athletes

Loneliness, nihilism, and ultimately fatalism are extremely prominent in Gen Z. Financial issues as well, but I think tackling the loneliness is priority 1.

I think fostering community engagement solves a lot of things if we can motivate people to pursue it. As a random but current example, I like that people play pickleball now in parks. That gives one outlet in which to meet new people and grow some empathy for your neighbors and ultimately gain friendships. I also think volunteer efforts through a church provide similar good opportunities.

Between witnessing this and the Hail Mary to beat UGA two weeks prior in person, I felt I had ascended to peak sports fandom and that nothing would ever top those moments.

I remember walking out of it thinking it wouldn’t age nearly as well as Infinity War. I tend to hate time travel gimmicks.