the sex doll thing was intended as a metaphor throughout this thread. we've been slaves for thousands of years, that bit hasnt changed. what has changed is that people nowadays no longer care about themselves because they are fried. watching life on a screen feels close enough to the real thing - why bother living at all, living is risky and can hurt you. the usual answer to that would be testosterone pushing us to do risky things, but test rates have cratered. in the absence of risk attraction, values would help, but nobody has any values, because we decided to throw religion in the bin under the expectation that values would spontaneously manifest (which they didnt, no surprise, we are literally monkeys). and after all that, yes we are being worked to the bone more than ever - at least serfs owned their land.

My guess is we'll end up divorcing human reproduction from human sexuality at some point anyway. I don't know if that'll be a net good thing or a net bad thing, and don't have a strong opinion either way, but I do know that regardless of any debate about the causes of low birth rates, we are no longer subject to the evolutionary pressure that, however accidentally, gave us what intelligence we have. (Many of the religions you seem to be advocating would say we never were.)

Anyway, none of this is an emergency. Near-term survival is the real concern, accompanied by continued technological progress. Neo-Luddites are working up the courage to take direct action (see comments elsewhere in this thread), and they will be using tools far more effective than the shoes, angry words, and monkey wrenches their predecessors employed. Meanwhile, the most popular religion in America has convinced its followers that a nuclear war is just the ticket to bring Jesus back.

I wish those words were as stupid as they sound, but we live in times that celebrate stupidity and are ruled by those who embody it. If we can get through the next 50 years without any major civilization-level setbacks, I think we'll be home free. So that needs to be the focus.

i do not intend to advocate for religion, least of all american neo-christianity (which has very little to do with the ten commandments and very much to do with a hyperreal facsimile of jesus being puppeted to make money for a select few). the intended argument is that when progress down one branch falters, one would be best off reverting to the known stable state. deleting morality has reverted us much further than anyone on this forum will give us credit for - i look at oration a century ago and cry at what we've lost. sexuality already is divorced from reproduction; its the example that woke me to hyperreality having come true. people do not have sex to make babies, they run around fucking like animals for the sheer pleasure of it. our senses have become detached from the purpose they serve - the map of the territory has overflowed the territory, baudrillard's very definition of hyperreality is embodied. i do agree with the next steps of your guess, that is going further down the track of huxley's brave new world. thanks for sharing your perspective and sharing a little bit of hope.