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When reading an article like this I’m distracted by the overwhelming number of possible causes. Could be life today, life 10 years ago, or expectations for the

When reading an article like this I’m distracted by the overwhelming number of possible causes. Could be life today, life 10 years ago, or expectations for the future. We don’t have sufficient data to really disentangle so many possible variables. As a youngish adult myself I’m not sure my peers know what’s going on either as they experience mental health problems. Everything is shrouded in such complicated stories about azburgers, food intolerances (gut health), economic inequality, wholeness, pandemic, inflation, social media, consumerism, climate anxiety, etc. It makes me wonder about more general solutions to the more general problems. I’m most persuaded by Adam Curtis’s documentaries that what we’re really experiencing is the failures of individualism being pushed too far. The story is compelling. Life has always been hard, and the way humanity copes and intervenes is through social institutions ahd the grand stories that bring us together to collectively act and solve them. It’s family, local communities, churches, etc. that provide direct emotional and physical support at scale. These institutions have messed up in the past, bringing with them a legacy of bad decisions and structured inequality, but I increasingly agree with Adam Curtis that deprioritising them in favor of radical individualism just isn’t working. As Curtis says - we need a new grand story for what society is all about and social institutions to organise around that story. And until then my peers and I will wander in the dark wondering why we feel so afraid, alone, and purposeless. We got rid of the leadership hierarchies we hated, and tech in particular helped us do it by creating markets for everything. You can live in your bubble with remote anything and delivery everything. But we failed to create a new reason for living. It’s all just open markets, infinite choice, and no need to depend on others or for them to depend on you. Among other things, people want to feel like someone needs them.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thewayup 4y ago
for being the first comment on this post, that got deep real fast...
- williamtrask 4y ago
  Sorry if it’s a bit much. I’m finishing a PhD sortof on the topic and I’m really passionate about it.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Seems like we need a united cause. Surviving heat death seems like one whose target can improve quality of life as a byproduct.
    - williamtrask 4y ago
      That’s a good start but IMO humanity already has the cause of avoiding death and that’s never been enough. We may need a new good to run towards, not just an evil to run away from.
      - epicureanideal 4y ago
        Happy families and high quality romantic relationships? We have lots of gadgets, but the simple things like being able to find someone to marry and have a family with are becoming much harder, and much more frequently ends in financial ruin.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gotoeleven 4y ago
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moneycantbuy 4y ago
yeah it seems meaningful community is hard to come by these days, at least in usa. i think economic inequality is the cause of most ills. everyone is so busy chasing scraps of money for themselves, and debt-ridden college grads often have no clear path for a career that pays their current bills, let alone ensures retirement. no affordable quiet space to sleep or think, no time or money for community centers. just a race to the bottom while staring at tik tok 24/7
- sammalloy 4y ago
  > i think economic inequality is the cause of most ills. "Poverty is both a cause of mental health problems and a consequence." If you have even a little bit of money, there is a large mental burden that is relieved. You can breathe easier, you can relax, you can take care of yourself just a little bit more. It’s a huge cognitive load that is suddenly lightened. There’s also another problem I rarely see addressed, namely that American social norms, work practices, and consumer behavior also lead to crazy-making. We don’t have the social safety net the majority of nations do, and this contributes to the mental health feedback loop. In my own small community, we have hundreds of untreated mentally ill people living in the streets, some of whom are randomly violent. This is not good for them and it is not good for the rest of us who are lucky enough to have places to live. There needs to be treatment programs for them to go to be helped, when in many cases they refuse help of any kind.
hjgjhyuhy 4y ago
I agree. In our modern societies we have more means of communication than ever, yet we’re also more lonely than ever before. Urbanization has also disrupted people’s social lives very much. Raising children is hard when your parents live far away and all your friends are too busy to help, even with state-funded childcare. Different generations used to live together and help each other. Underpaid nurses and nannies are just a shallow replacement to that. Then of course there’s the insane pace of change and increasing competition. Only guaranteed sources of income are either very hard to get into, or pay peanuts with bad working conditions. AI might make even some of those disappear, rendering years of education worthless. Life is much more complex than before. There are lots of options, but no obvious answers to which actually make sense. I’m lucky enough to have access to free education and decent social security, but still I feel like my life is way more uncertain than it was for my parents. They just had to get an education and could then work until retirement with same employer, buy a house and just settle down. Without job security pretty much everything else becomes difficult.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >In our modern societies we have more means of communication than ever, yet we’re also more lonely than ever before. I really wonder if most people are just worthlessly incompetent at forms of communication other than face-to-face interactions. The narrative is that the covid lockdowns made people more socially isolated, and to some extent I don't disagree, but the narrative goes on to paint an image of "noone to see or talk to, lonely, might die, help" which in this day and age is simply not (or at least shouldn't be) possible. A video call is literally only a Skype or a Discord away. Talking to someone is literally just a phone call away. Fucking social media swamps you in the presence of others. I admit that it probably helped that I hate dealing with humans in the flesh anyway, but I felt no lessening in my ability to socialize because my communications and interactions by and large weren't disrupted. The "we are more disconnected the more connected we become" narrative can go die on a rusty spork.
  - ativzzz 4y ago
    > I really wonder if most people are just worthlessly incompetent at forms of communication other than face-to-face interactions. I think a large number of people are worthlessly incompetent at communicating effectively period. Face-to-face is what most humans are good at, so if you are bad at that, you will usually be even worse at other forms
xabotage 4y ago
There is definitely a massive breakdown of old social institutions that have not adapted to the modern world. People don't need to be closely knit to their families and local religion in order to survive anymore, and they are simultaneously discovering how awful these institutions habitually are. To improve families, I imagine we'd have to wait for a significantly large generation to mature whose parents started a family through informed choice rather than social/cultural/religious pressure. Alternatively, we could regress by taking away people's freedoms (especially women's) and force everyone to be dependent on traditional power structures just like the "good old days." Personally, I'd rather move forward, but it's not entirely clear what that looks like.
- meowtimemania 4y ago
  What is the modern replacement for religion? Growing up I felt like I had this huge tight-knit community via the mormon church. I've since left mormonism and don't think I'll ever find a replacement for the community I had in the church.
  - xabotage 4y ago
    There won't be an exact replacement because the circumstances that led to the community cannot (or rather, should not) be replicated. For the sake of the survival of the planet/species, I also don't think any institution based around magical thinking should fill the gap. Keep in mind that high-demand religions require a huge investment of time and money. Devoting even just a fraction of those resources to hobbies, art classes, and/or other local activities tends to yield much better social results. While this might not perfectly fill the gap, neither did the religion, which is why people are leaving it.
    - williamtrask 4y ago
      > For the sake of the survival of the planet/species, I also don't think any institution based around magical thinking should fill the gap. I know this won’t be a popular point, but I think we have nearly all of human history as evidence that “magical believing” societies survive more effectively than not. At any time literally any tribe could have chosen to believe in nothing. It’s almost impossible to think that no tribe tried it. Heck. It’s the default state until you make up a deity! And yet… the overwhelming majority of societies were based on “magical” thinking. Inversely, it’s possible there could be a hard scientific truth that we discover and kills us all (“information hazard” by Nick Bostrom is a good survey… think nuclear bombs etc) It’s a really interesting mental experiment. Is truth best defined by repeatable experimentation (Manhattan project) or by human thriving (including magical thinking). Aside: Reinforcement Learning theory hardcore leans (implicitly) on the latter.
int_19h 4y ago
> we got rid of the leadership hierarchies we hated When I look around, I see plenty of leadership hierarchies that are worthy of hate.
LunarAurora 4y ago
> more general solutions to the more general problems....individualism being pushed too far. Individualism itself is the child of rationalism. It is rationalism as in "rational choice theory". Rationalism is a double-edged sword. Think you can undefinedly enjoy its benefits without facing its darker side (mental health, earth’s health…)? think again. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory
amelius 4y ago
> Among other things, people want to feel like someone needs them. A simple suggestion but this is where playing a team sport can be really helpful, so here you might find groups of people with less mental health issues.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

thewayup 4y ago

for being the first comment on this post, that got deep real fast...

williamtrask 4y ago
Sorry if it’s a bit much. I’m finishing a PhD sortof on the topic and I’m really passionate about it.
- tomrod 4y ago
  Seems like we need a united cause. Surviving heat death seems like one whose target can improve quality of life as a byproduct.
  - williamtrask 4y ago
    That’s a good start but IMO humanity already has the cause of avoiding death and that’s never been enough. We may need a new good to run towards, not just an evil to run away from.
    - epicureanideal 4y ago
      Happy families and high quality romantic relationships? We have lots of gadgets, but the simple things like being able to find someone to marry and have a family with are becoming much harder, and much more frequently ends in financial ruin.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

gotoeleven 4y ago

moneycantbuy 4y ago

yeah it seems meaningful community is hard to come by these days, at least in usa. i think economic inequality is the cause of most ills. everyone is so busy chasing scraps of money for themselves, and debt-ridden college grads often have no clear path for a career that pays their current bills, let alone ensures retirement. no affordable quiet space to sleep or think, no time or money for community centers. just a race to the bottom while staring at tik tok 24/7

sammalloy 4y ago
> i think economic inequality is the cause of most ills. "Poverty is both a cause of mental health problems and a consequence." If you have even a little bit of money, there is a large mental burden that is relieved. You can breathe easier, you can relax, you can take care of yourself just a little bit more. It’s a huge cognitive load that is suddenly lightened. There’s also another problem I rarely see addressed, namely that American social norms, work practices, and consumer behavior also lead to crazy-making. We don’t have the social safety net the majority of nations do, and this contributes to the mental health feedback loop. In my own small community, we have hundreds of untreated mentally ill people living in the streets, some of whom are randomly violent. This is not good for them and it is not good for the rest of us who are lucky enough to have places to live. There needs to be treatment programs for them to go to be helped, when in many cases they refuse help of any kind.

hjgjhyuhy 4y ago

I agree. In our modern societies we have more means of communication than ever, yet we’re also more lonely than ever before. Urbanization has also disrupted people’s social lives very much. Raising children is hard when your parents live far away and all your friends are too busy to help, even with state-funded childcare. Different generations used to live together and help each other. Underpaid nurses and nannies are just a shallow replacement to that. Then of course there’s the insane pace of change and increasing competition. Only guaranteed sources of income are either very hard to get into, or pay peanuts with bad working conditions. AI might make even some of those disappear, rendering years of education worthless. Life is much more complex than before. There are lots of options, but no obvious answers to which actually make sense. I’m lucky enough to have access to free education and decent social security, but still I feel like my life is way more uncertain than it was for my parents. They just had to get an education and could then work until retirement with same employer, buy a house and just settle down. Without job security pretty much everything else becomes difficult.

Dalewyn 4y ago
>In our modern societies we have more means of communication than ever, yet we’re also more lonely than ever before. I really wonder if most people are just worthlessly incompetent at forms of communication other than face-to-face interactions. The narrative is that the covid lockdowns made people more socially isolated, and to some extent I don't disagree, but the narrative goes on to paint an image of "noone to see or talk to, lonely, might die, help" which in this day and age is simply not (or at least shouldn't be) possible. A video call is literally only a Skype or a Discord away. Talking to someone is literally just a phone call away. Fucking social media swamps you in the presence of others. I admit that it probably helped that I hate dealing with humans in the flesh anyway, but I felt no lessening in my ability to socialize because my communications and interactions by and large weren't disrupted. The "we are more disconnected the more connected we become" narrative can go die on a rusty spork.
- ativzzz 4y ago
  > I really wonder if most people are just worthlessly incompetent at forms of communication other than face-to-face interactions. I think a large number of people are worthlessly incompetent at communicating effectively period. Face-to-face is what most humans are good at, so if you are bad at that, you will usually be even worse at other forms

xabotage 4y ago

There is definitely a massive breakdown of old social institutions that have not adapted to the modern world. People don't need to be closely knit to their families and local religion in order to survive anymore, and they are simultaneously discovering how awful these institutions habitually are. To improve families, I imagine we'd have to wait for a significantly large generation to mature whose parents started a family through informed choice rather than social/cultural/religious pressure. Alternatively, we could regress by taking away people's freedoms (especially women's) and force everyone to be dependent on traditional power structures just like the "good old days." Personally, I'd rather move forward, but it's not entirely clear what that looks like.

meowtimemania 4y ago
What is the modern replacement for religion? Growing up I felt like I had this huge tight-knit community via the mormon church. I've since left mormonism and don't think I'll ever find a replacement for the community I had in the church.
- xabotage 4y ago
  There won't be an exact replacement because the circumstances that led to the community cannot (or rather, should not) be replicated. For the sake of the survival of the planet/species, I also don't think any institution based around magical thinking should fill the gap. Keep in mind that high-demand religions require a huge investment of time and money. Devoting even just a fraction of those resources to hobbies, art classes, and/or other local activities tends to yield much better social results. While this might not perfectly fill the gap, neither did the religion, which is why people are leaving it.
  - williamtrask 4y ago
    > For the sake of the survival of the planet/species, I also don't think any institution based around magical thinking should fill the gap. I know this won’t be a popular point, but I think we have nearly all of human history as evidence that “magical believing” societies survive more effectively than not. At any time literally any tribe could have chosen to believe in nothing. It’s almost impossible to think that no tribe tried it. Heck. It’s the default state until you make up a deity! And yet… the overwhelming majority of societies were based on “magical” thinking. Inversely, it’s possible there could be a hard scientific truth that we discover and kills us all (“information hazard” by Nick Bostrom is a good survey… think nuclear bombs etc) It’s a really interesting mental experiment. Is truth best defined by repeatable experimentation (Manhattan project) or by human thriving (including magical thinking). Aside: Reinforcement Learning theory hardcore leans (implicitly) on the latter.

int_19h 4y ago

> we got rid of the leadership hierarchies we hated When I look around, I see plenty of leadership hierarchies that are worthy of hate.

LunarAurora 4y ago

> more general solutions to the more general problems....individualism being pushed too far. Individualism itself is the child of rationalism. It is rationalism as in "rational choice theory". Rationalism is a double-edged sword. Think you can undefinedly enjoy its benefits without facing its darker side (mental health, earth’s health…)? think again. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory

amelius 4y ago

> Among other things, people want to feel like someone needs them. A simple suggestion but this is where playing a team sport can be really helpful, so here you might find groups of people with less mental health issues.