The Pseudo-Enlightenment: Why Modern Culture Is Undermining Emotional Adulthood and Commitment

Why does adulthood feel delayed, fragile, or avoided altogether in modern life?

Why do so many people struggle with commitment, emotional endurance, and long-term relationships?

In Episode 2 of The Voyage Cast, Eddie continues the series by examining the deeper cultural philosophy that made overstimulation, emotional fragility, and arrested development feel normal, even virtuous.

This episode introduces what Eddie calls the pseudo-enlightenment. A worldview that uses the language of freedom, authenticity, and self-expression while quietly removing the very structures that every culture once relied on to form emotionally mature adults.

Drawing from psychology, anthropology, and philosophy, this episode explores:

• How traditional cultures intentionally formed adults through structure, constraint, and responsibility
• Why modern culture reframes discomfort as harm and correction as oppression
• How emotional arrested development becomes normalized as “authenticity.”
• Why supernormal stimuli thrive in a culture that avoids formation
• How this worldview undermines marriage, commitment, and long-term love
• What it means to reclaim formation without nostalgia or moral panic

This is not a rejection of growth or progress.

It is a warning about what happens when formation is replaced by expression and adulthood is treated as optional.

This episode is Part Two of a three-part series.

Next: The Mask and the Marriage — How False Authenticity Destroys Intimacy.