Collapse?

 According to an article on Yahoo, "nearly half of all young adults are single: 34 percent of women and a whopping 63 percent of men. Around 30 percent of young men reported in 2019 that they had no sex in the past year, compared to about 20 percent of young women."

The reasons are complex. The article only touches on a few. Some it gets wrong, "Women want a partner who is emotionally open and empathetic, the opposite of the age-old masculine ideal." If that were the case, the numbers would be more balanced. Society is creating a generation of weak men.

Feminism, the internet, and society all play a part. Max is part of those statistics, and I feel sorry for him. He lacks direction and has no desire to date. Not even casually, at least not that he has mentioned. 

Regardless of the root cause, the effects can be seen-- a decrease in marriages, shrinking populations, and increased mental health issues. Society as we know it is changing. Whether it will evolve into something better or snuff itself out will be the question.

I can only say things are changing for the worse by judging from the past. I would like to think it marks a change that will create future stability for our planet and race. What I see, the rise of artificial intelligence and artificial wombs, are things that will exacerbate the problem.

It reminds me of John Calhoun's mouse utopia experiment, Universe 25.

At the peak population, most mice spent every living second in the company of hundreds of other mice. They gathered in the main squares, waiting to be fed and occasionally attacking each other. Few females carried pregnancies to term, and the ones that did seemed to simply forget about their babies. They'd move half their litter away from danger and forget the rest. Sometimes they'd drop and abandon a baby while they were carrying it.

The few secluded spaces housed a population Calhoun called, "the beautiful ones." Generally guarded by one male, the females—and few males—inside the space didn't breed or fight or do anything but eat and groom and sleep. When the population started declining the beautiful ones were spared from violence and death, but had completely lost touch with social behaviors, including having sex or caring for their young.

Universe 25 population peaked at 2,200 mice and thereafter exhibited a variety of abnormal, often destructive, behaviors, including refusal to engage in courtship and females abandoning their young. By the 600th day, the population was on its way to extinction. Though physically able to reproduce, the mice had lost the social skills required to mate.