The Tragic End of John Doe

The original (Spanish) version of this article can be found here.

John Doe was an average guy. He liked to travel, enjoy the outdoors, go out for a drink, and play sports. From the moment he was born, his life was already decided. Like all other average guys, Fulanito was going to have a job, a house, a wife, kids, responsibilities, joys, routines, friends, and stories to tell at the bar at the end of the day. Without needing to be anyone special, John Doe was going to be someone.

Of course, he was going to pay for it—with his effort. A daily declaration of allegiance to the same system that promised him an escape from the fear his parents had suffered—fear of poverty, fear of war.

And since the fear of hunger fades quickly when there’s always a plate of food on the table, there were also little rewards for John Doe every few years, to keep him going: buying a house when he moved out of his parents’ home, then a car, then another, sending his kids to a private school, climbing the career ladder, buying a vacation home, then another to rent out, going to Disneyland one year, New York the next, getting another promotion, and finally retiring with the same woman he left home with, knowing she would take care of him for the rest of his life. Life was like a video game, with a mini-boss at the end of each level. That was gamification.

And everything was crystal clear—until 2008, when John Doe’s dream died. And, even worse: no one told him. No one told anyone. In the early decades of the 21st century, the idea that there would be a place for every Fulanito in the world—just by existing—quietly perished. But there was no obituary. No headline in the newspapers. We kept acting as if nothing had changed, as if the world of before would return once we got “back to pre-crisis levels.”

The John Does born before the early 1970s managed to slip through. By the time 2008 hit, their jobs were already secure, they had bought homes before the crisis, and feminism arrived too late in their wives' lives for them to consider starting over. They have held on to their parents’ lifestyle—albeit with far fewer perks—and can now see retirement on the horizon. It’s not much, but it’s something. Better not to stir things up.

But the John Does who are now in their late thirties to fifties? They are the canary in the coal mine. Even if they can’t pinpoint exactly what has died in their lives, they can’t ignore the stench of the corpse.

These John Does now wander through dating apps, announcing that they are just normal guys looking for another woman to take care of them. As if that were a selling point for any woman in 2025! They send out the same cookie-cutter résumés as all the other Fulanitos, blasting them out on LinkedIn, hoping that job-hopping will provide the sense of adventure they can’t find anywhere else: “Degree in Business Administration, Master’s in International Trade.” Or they rant on Twitter. Or they train for a half marathon. And unless something changes, before they hit 70, another economic cycle will send them crashing into unemployment—too late for anything.

John Doe knows it. That’s why he’s angry. And terrified. That’s why he sometimes thinks about tying himself to the mast and taking the civil service exam. Or just staying put, even if it’s miserable.

And honestly? Maybe he deserves it. For everyone who isn’t a white, cis, straight man—for the vast majority—what John Doe considered “normal” was actually a privilege inaccessible to everyone else.

The collapse of the industrial model, combined with the rise of feminism, has created a double-dip crisis for John Doe. While historically marginalized groups have seen their lives improve significantly in recent years, his has deteriorated—both on a macro and a micro level.

That’s why, in certain progressive, educated, urban circles, we don’t experience the end of the 20th-century dream with the same brutality. But we can’t ignore that the reasons behind John Doe’s tragic downfall will soon be the reasons for everyone else’s. The fact that many people’s living conditions have improved—through reduced gender inequality or discrimination—shouldn’t blind us to the reality that the social model we built our entire society on died years ago. Our social structure revolved around the illusion that, one day, everyone would have the same opportunities as a John Doe.

Anyone born after 1980 knows that today’s world feels much more like The Hunger Games. As the Spanish singer Aute once put it:

"Now that there are no more trenches
The battle is the staircase
And whoever climbs the highest
Will be the one to keep their head.”

Those of us who refuse to accept that the future is about individually saving ourselves need to realize—there’s no going back. There is no glorious industrial past to return to. Neoliberalism will not bring back a society of equal opportunities. Neither the left nor the right will resurrect John Doe’s dream. Or that of social democracy. The only way out is forward.

The task of the 21st century is to reimagine, to think of a new future, an unprecedented, shared promise that we have yet to define. A promise that will require all our intelligence and a new set of 21st-century values.

That’s what this blog is about. My intuition is that this new promise will involve reclaiming everything that millennial culture has made abundant. But that’s a topic for many more posts.

If you agree and want to keep this conversation going, I invite you to subscribe to this blog.

If only to keep beauty from sinking into the asphalt.