[mixedCase]

> When you get to scale that large, you are talking about society and culture, not individual choices.

A society and culture that pampers their children instead of making them learn their place in the world? I wasn't speaking about him in particular, but rather the parenting culture that created this reclusive and apathetic behavior.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Still less dangerous than a society and culture that pampers bankers and the rich at the expense of everyone else.

The "Why don't you take responsibility for your failure?" question is self-serving and abusive. The reality is that competitive neoliberal capitalism has created a culture in which success is - quite literally - not an option for the majority of the population.

This happens to be a very self-destructive way to run a culture. It's brittle, it has multiple failure modes, it's maladaptive and unable to deal realistically with challenges, and over the medium term onwards it's inherently unstable.

So people will opt out from it. They'll either opt out inwards, as these hermits do, or they'll opt out outwards, which is a guaranteed way to create some suicidally destructive political messes.