I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of success—what it means, and more importantly, who gets to define it. By the popular standards of the Western post-1960s model, I should probably consider myself a failure. I didn’t go to prom. I didn’t party in high school. I didn’t even finish school the normal way. When I finally got to university, I didn’t move out or go to clubs or live the so-called “student life.” I lived at home. When I did finally move out, I lasted two months before the anxiety and loneliness became unbearable. I gave the place back.
And if you measure that against the story we’re sold about what a grown man should be by this age, I’m nowhere near it.
But something tells me that’s the wrong story.
Because from the perspective of most of human history—of how people actually lived for the majority of our evolutionary history—what I’m doing is not failure – it’s the norm. It’s life. Real, ancestral, deeply human life.
I. The World We Lost (And How Fast It Disappeared)
For nearly 2 million years or more, we lived with our families. With our parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Generations under one roof. We didn’t measure adulthood by when you left the house—we measured it by when you started contributing to the house. Family was the structure. Marriage was the means to children, and children were the future of the community. You didn’t “go out” and date. You found someone within the tribe, within the network, and you stayed. Because staying was survival.
But all of that was shattered—quickly, decisively, and for reasons no one ever stops to consider.
II. The Engine of Change: Why Productivity Demanded a New World
The key reason this shift happened isn’t spiritual, ideological, or even cultural. It’s material. Economic. Structural.
Societies—especially industrial ones—have always required labor. As populations grew, and as capitalism matured, the need for increased productivity became the central priority of every serious state. More output. More efficiency. More growth. That need began to redefine every social structure, especially the family.
In early agrarian life, the family was a productive unit. Everyone worked the land. Children helped. Women worked in and around the home. Men took care of external affairs. But as society industrialized, the model changed. Labor moved to factories, then to offices, and eventually to the digital space. And this transformation demanded more workers.
The solution? Unlock the other half of the population.
Women had always worked, but not in formalized wage systems. The 20th century saw the rapid entry of women into the salaried labor force. First during world wars, when men were sent to fight. Then more permanently, when governments and corporations realized something: doubling the labor pool doubles the economy. And if women also pay taxes, take loans, and spend money independently—well, that’s a dream for a growth-obsessed economic model.
This is the true genesis of our modern era. Not feminism. Not ideology. Not conspiracy. Just raw productivity.
III. Material Conditions Always Win
Everything else followed naturally. The death of marriage. The explosion of loneliness. The rise of casual sex. The obsession with “independence.” None of this happened because people suddenly became immoral or weak. It happened because material conditions changed.
Until recently, a woman’s survival often depended on finding a man. She couldn’t own property. She couldn’t make her own money. If she had a child out of wedlock, it could destroy her life. So marriage was not romance—it was necessity. It was how she got protection, food, and social status. And that necessity is why cultures—especially religious ones—created rules around it. Adultery wasn’t just wrong; it was dangerous. For the whole village.
But now? That world is gone.
Women today:
- Earn money on their own
- Have full access to legal protection and capital
- Can raise children solo, with state support
- Can live, work, and travel without needing a man
There’s no longer any need. And biology is very simple. If the body can get resources without bonding, it won’t bond. And that’s what we’re seeing.
IV. The Great Rewiring of Human Bonds
This is why marriage rates are collapsing. Why birth rates are falling. Why even religious women are delaying, divorcing, or staying single. It’s not ideological. It’s biological. If I can get what I need alone, why would I bind myself to someone else?
Even the most traditional communities aren’t immune. Hijabi girls who pray five times a day now say, “I want to work and live on my own.” Religious girls talk about moving out before marriage. And even when they marry, many refuse to live with the husband’s family. This would’ve been unheard of two generations ago. Now it’s normal.
Why? Because it’s now physically possible.
And the pain many women are starting to feel—this wave of “I was lied to” regret from ex-feminists—isn’t because they were deceived. It’s because they followed the logic of the system, and the system leads to loneliness.
They weren’t tricked. They were simply navigating a new terrain without a map.
V. Culture Follows the World—Not the Other Way Around
Some say this is a “cultural decline.” That people lost their values. That the West is decaying. But that’s backwards.
Culture doesn’t create material conditions. Material conditions create culture.
When the need for marriage vanishes, the culture that supported it will collapse in time. Not because people hate tradition, but because tradition no longer fits the new reality.
Yes, culture can shape material life temporarily. But in the long run, physical conditions always win. You can delay the shift, but you can’t stop it.
Every traditional society that still exists is protected by modern systems—or partially modernized already. Even remote tribes use metal, medicine, or global tools. The world is simply one now. And the forces that shape it are global.
And again, this wasn’t driven by ideology. It was a productivity decision. Countries wanted economic growth, and unlocking half the workforce was the clearest path.
VI. The Coming World: A Portrait in Fragments
If we follow the current, here’s what I see coming:
- Marriage becomes symbolic—a cultural artifact like New Year’s Eve or Valentine’s Day
- Most people drift in and out of relationships, following mood and compatibility
- Children are increasingly raised by one parent and supported by AI
- Loneliness becomes chronic, even normalized
- Population collapses in developed nations
- AI fills in for lost productivity—but not for emotional or spiritual connection
The old structures won’t be rebuilt. They will be remembered nostalgically, honored in fiction and old songs. But not lived.
VII. My Own Life: A Warning and a Signpost
So am I a failure? Not if I understand where we’re going.
I live with family. I work digitally. I’m embedded in future tech but rooted in ancestral structure.
I’m not out of place. I’m ahead of the curve.
And the future, in my view, belongs to people like that:
- Men who stay with their families but work globally
- Women who blend career and motherhood, not in isolation but in community
- Families that rebuild tribe—not just through blood, but through conscious design
VIII. The Shadow: What We Lost
There’s a downside to all of this. An epidemic of loneliness. A lack of childbearing. A sense of being untethered from anything deeper.
Women (and men) are struggling. They aren’t “winning” modern life so much as surviving it. They chose autonomy—and found themselves isolated. The “anti-feminist” moment isn’t a political backlash. It’s a psychological reaction. A silent scream: I miss being held. I miss having a purpose. I miss being needed.
We may survive this stage. AI might patch up the productivity gaps. But the spiritual damage is harder to fix.
IX. The Answer: Tribe 2.0
We’re not going back. But we must go forward with wisdom.
We must:
- Use modern autonomy wisely
- Rebuild community intentionally
- Stop worshiping “independence” for its own sake
- Embrace children not as burdens but as legacy
- Redefine success around connection, contribution, and rootedness
The successful man of tomorrow isn’t the one in a penthouse alone. It’s the man who lives with family, works online, and helps raise the next generation.
The successful woman isn’t the isolated careerist with no home life. It’s the mother who works but remains embedded in a living, breathing community.
We are not meant to float alone, eating frozen food and watching reels in sterile apartments. We are meant to love, build, belong.
X. Final Thoughts
The human being is not a productivity unit. We are not born to maximize GDP. We are born to carry love across time. We are not machines. We are memories, stories, skin, laughter. We are not made for isolation. We are made for tribe.
That tribe may no longer be ten people in a hut. It may be ten people across three households connected by WhatsApp and weekend dinners. That’s fine. What matters is that it exists.
So maybe the answer isn’t to return to the past. But to integrate the best of both worlds.
Let technology liberate us from toil. Let freedom allow us to choose love. Let the future be not cold and disconnected—but communal, warm, rooted.
The new success is this: to live modern, but stay human.
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