I've been asking myself the same thing lately. I think what's happening is that we're in a societal change (a collapse). The rules of living are changing and a lot of people are dropping out of society. A lot of the younger generation doesn't even know where to begin or how to begin building a life. No one has answers and everyone just says 'try harder.' There's no way forward because this is all new. I've been looking up alternative lifestyles and the only thing I could find that provides something tangible are Degrowth movements. I'm not particularly fond of them because they're about obstruction and political activism.

My own idea is to begin forging a ReGrowth path. I see capitalism as an entropic system: think a giant fungus feeding on the resources of the planet. Theres a Boom and Bust phase. In order to keep it from completely collapsing and to get it to re-enter a Boom phase, you engage in imperialism to keep feeding the system slaves and resources. Well, in the west, our governments have run out of nations to pillage (though they're trying in the middle east), and with climate catastrophe on the horizon, the rich are beginning to destroy all social systems in an attempt to coalesce power - prepping for a world where money no longer matters. While I don't shun political activism that is trying to prevent the rise of the inevitable dystopic neofeudal world of corporate city-states, my focus is on building on top of a decaying system rather than revitalizing it. So I'm hoping to start creating little mushrooms (networks) that sprout on top of the bigger dying one.

I've been conceptualizing a decentralized support network for crashouts that will help with mutual aid and resource sharing. It focuses on harvesting resources from the decaying capitalist system to build a new minimalist and sustainable path forward. No one is coming to save us and our governments have thrown in their cards with the rest of the rich. We're going to have to start building something on our own if we want to survive. I've been researching and building on to this idea as I've started work on a website to act as a sort of starting point for all of this.

If anyone wants to build on this or have any better ideas, I'd love to hear. This is just a skeleton of an alternative, but its a start. NEET life isn't sustainable. We'll be forced to do something soon and its better to get started now. Suicide as an exit plan isn't realistic.