it's unclear if most ppl realize that ozempic’s real effects on culture haven’t even started.
cuz what you’re seeing now is the first order effects & some glimpses of second order where ppl get thinner & some products experiencing a resurgence.
but the second & third order effects are where things might get gnarly due to the fact that these drugs seem to dampen desire itself across a surprisingly wide range of behaviors (it's not universal or obvious yet). food is simply the first & most obvious target.
liek what happens when millions of people suddenly spend less time thinking about consumption? what happens to industries built around cravings, indulgence, impulse purchases, addiction loops, or even certain forms of entertainment?
entire sections of the economy assume humans will remain governed by the same reward circuitry we’ve had for thousands of years. if these drugs meaningfully alter those circuits, we’re talking about a tool that edits human motivation.
we are gonna see thinness but in a lot of diff ways it seems like.
There is a Stone Age tribal war happening in Colombia right now
The Misak and Nasa people are fighting over a section of land. Yes this is real, and yes they are using traditional weapons. Video is from May 21st, 2026.
we talk a lot about institutions being skinsuited tho everyone carries on as if they they were the same as they once were.
it occurs to me this applies hardest to governments and peoples.
the US government, the UK government, on and on have no substantial institutional continuity with the entities we traditionally associate with those labels who generated the prestige of the organizations. the presidency is debauched, congress is castrated and vestigial, the court profaned, the bureaucracy metastatic.
similarly our notions of "americans." what is an "american" today? what have they to do with the people who fought the revolution? who conquered the frontier and the world? who bore the long twilight struggle, even?
it seems to me very little. the blood is grown thin and saeculum has done the rest.
we have forgotten the face of our father.
Watching this process was actually one of the most informative pattern-matching periods of my life. Seeing how the civilizational brain is wired, what induces broad panic, and why it is actually a very bad idea to try to rapidly put resentful bureaucrats out on the street.