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Kinda proves too much. Almost everyone has some aspect of their life they're dissatisfied with, and would be possible to improve their contentment with life or enjoyment of life if they could coordinate with OTHER people enough to address that area. Or at least coordinate enough to mitigate whatever particular behavior was leading to to the negative outcome. Why should anyone care about grinding unhappiness in anyone but themselves? Why should anyone look around and see if there are potential ways to move towards a better space on the payoff matrix with a little coordination?
We could go the route of extreme atomisation where every person is solely responsible for their own hedonic state but that seems likely to result in everyone sabotaging themselves and others in ways they can't identify without having a bare minimum amount of empathy or at least realizing "hey, this thing that is making me unhappy is also making these other people unhappy, is it possible we could do something about it?
But a society where nobody puts ANY stake in their fellow citizen's wellbeing is (probably) going to be far worse off than one where people are at least willing to communicate their dissatisfaction and others are willing to hear and consider their complaints.
Some problems are mostly intractable, serious mental illness and hardcore drug addiction are often treatment resistant. So the solutions will involve, putting it bluntly, working around the sufferers and not with them so much, to get them in safe housing with consistent supervision where they are less dangerous to others and themselves, and they aren't spitting off externalities just by their existence.
But I do think that the 'problem' of socially inept, sexless, loveless, despairing males can be wrangled with and improved with the cooperation of said males. If only people would give a fuck.
I'm in a position where I'm not sexless and generally don't have trouble interacting with women, but have had an absolute bear of a time finding a woman both worthy of and willing to reciprocate true commitment, so I do count myself among the ranks of the unhappily single. And the more I grasp the severity and nature of the problem, the more I realize that those poor unfortunate souls who haven't made it past first base (if that) are stuck in a loop that is approximately equal parts their own ineptitude but also the forces of social consensus have them in a spiral where each day that passes without finding love makes them appear less worthy of it, and renders their crusade to find a partner ever more hopeless, which saps their motivation to even try to escape.
And, on the flip side, the alpha males who are aware of their advantages in the sexual marketplace are often spitting off externalities of their own, leaving behind broken hearts and 'ruined' women who will end up lonely and unhappy. Because those men, as you say, DO NOT really care about others' wellbeing and thus act in a way that ignores any second order effects they may be causing on other people. I won't go so far as to say they're 'defecting' from social norms, because those social norms were eroded before they arrived, but they are not doing anything to improve the norms.
Over the years, I have watched with intense frustration as many generally intelligent, put-together, 'eligible' women who could have formed a loving family with the right guy get entangled with those sociopathic type of men that are extremely good at getting what they want out of the opposite sex and giving very little in return, and thus these ladies end up with a kid, with STDs, with regrettable tattoos, and/or possibly a warped idea of what relationships should look like. Or at best sucks up a few years of her life where she has the best odds of finding a long-term partner and 'wasting' them on a selfish fling.
And I feel some measure of 'responsibility' for failing to step in and avert these inevitable outcomes. Not a LOT of responsibility, mind, but I feel like I do have some stake in the outcome, realizing how every female ruined by an 'alpha' now shrinks the pool that is available to the good guys who actually 'deserve' the affection.
So basically, I see many, many hapless males who genuinely crave affection, companionship, and yes, sex, and are literally 'unable' to acquire it under current social circumstances (and worse have no available resources to learn how to GIT GUD and maybe have a shot), and I see many hapless females who genuinely crave affection, companionship, and yes, sex who fall for the wrong type of guy and are unable to secure his long-term support after he plays with them (and worse the trauma or regret they experience makes it harder for them to form secure attachments in the future) and they're all OBVIOUSLY unhappy with their decisions and the way their lives have played out.
And I think, SURELY, if only we could get these two groups to interact under the right conditions, we could achieve MUTUAL GAIN FROM TRADE or something. If only someone(s) would put in the work to organize such an exchange.
And "if not me, then whom?"
That is perhaps the question worth asking. Who will take the hard steps necessary to make the collective marginally better off if they are only worried about their own internal state?
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