Are We All Clavicular Now?

Damir, Shadi and Christine discuss the latest wave of worrying data about young adults’ retreat from dating, sex, marriage and parenthood. Shadi lays out the big numbers — projections that a large minority of young Americans may never marry and a substantial share may never have children — and ties them to two worries: widespread loneliness (especially among young men) and long-run national capacity in an era of low fertility and reduced immigration. Christine agrees on the economic and political downstream effects but keeps returning to more normative questions: is a prosperous but degraded society worth saving?

The conversation swerves (as it tends to) into the subcultures forming in the vacuum: the looksmaxxing/manosphere influencer “Clavicular,” who embodies male energy redirected inward — away from courtship and community and toward obsessive self-modification and performative detachment from women. Damir pushes an uncomfortable adaptation thesis: maybe this is simply what “winning” does to advanced societies, whether we like the aesthetics of it or not.

Required Reading:

* “The truth about population decline,” by Martin Wolf (Financial Times).

* “Get Married Young,” by Brad Wilcox (Compact).

* “1-in-3: A Record Share of Young Adults Will Never Marry,” by Lyman Stone (Institute for Family Studies).

* The Human Flourishing Program’s “Flourish” measure (Harvard IQSS).