Good comment tying some of this together, LG - thanks. The WSJ just ran a piece in the last couple of weeks saying that something like a fourth of all millennials are depressed, unhappy, etc. I found that shocking. They seem like they have everything, but maybe that's the problem. Is it digital media? Lack of social connectedness? Why do they find the world so meaningless as you say?
Because compared to their predecessors (or for that matter, compared to their peers in other more traditional countries) who would have received via a religious tradition a sense of meaning and purpose for their lives, most children who grow up in secular families and/or communities (and thanks to the internet & iPhones this is bit by bit becoming the whole world) are told that they can decide for themselves not only whatever they want to do with their lives (up to and including attempting to override reality), but that it’s also up to them to determine what everything means (provided they are interested in imbuing their experiences & choices with any meaning at all). Having that much choice and freedom, particularly when it comes to the most important parts of one’s life, is a recipe for anxiety and depression - if people can get overwhelmed and can’t decide which laundry detergent to buy when they’re faced with 20 options, why would we expect things to go well when we tell kids that there are absolutely no constraints and that they can do whatever they want with their own lives?
Technology makes this problem much worse in that it functions as an additional distraction (total understatement there) from more positive pursuits that can develop people’s character and put them on a path to a meaningful life, as well as making possible things that were mere science fiction in the past (ie “sex change” surgeries). But even without disruptive technologies (after all, it’s not like people couldn’t choose to waste their lives in the past), having a culture that encourages young people to reject received wisdom & tradition (or to at least treat those things as incidental) will, I think, inevitably lead to a great many more people feeling unmoored, anxious, depressed and tending to despair. The gender identity movement that we’re seeing now is functioning as a religion for the increasing number of people who have given up on the more traditional varieties. But since it’s based on a denial of reality (and is inherently narcissistic in exalting the self), it’s ultimately not going to reduce the dissociation from one’s body (and from what I would say is one’s actual true self) and disconnection from the rest of society that leads to despair.
These are great comments. You've tied together a variety of influences and shown how they combine to create the problems you talk about. This should be a full length article. Well-done.
Good comment tying some of this together, LG - thanks. The WSJ just ran a piece in the last couple of weeks saying that something like a fourth of all millennials are depressed, unhappy, etc. I found that shocking. They seem like they have everything, but maybe that's the problem. Is it digital media? Lack of social connectedness? Why do they find the world so meaningless as you say?
Because compared to their predecessors (or for that matter, compared to their peers in other more traditional countries) who would have received via a religious tradition a sense of meaning and purpose for their lives, most children who grow up in secular families and/or communities (and thanks to the internet & iPhones this is bit by bit becoming the whole world) are told that they can decide for themselves not only whatever they want to do with their lives (up to and including attempting to override reality), but that it’s also up to them to determine what everything means (provided they are interested in imbuing their experiences & choices with any meaning at all). Having that much choice and freedom, particularly when it comes to the most important parts of one’s life, is a recipe for anxiety and depression - if people can get overwhelmed and can’t decide which laundry detergent to buy when they’re faced with 20 options, why would we expect things to go well when we tell kids that there are absolutely no constraints and that they can do whatever they want with their own lives?
Technology makes this problem much worse in that it functions as an additional distraction (total understatement there) from more positive pursuits that can develop people’s character and put them on a path to a meaningful life, as well as making possible things that were mere science fiction in the past (ie “sex change” surgeries). But even without disruptive technologies (after all, it’s not like people couldn’t choose to waste their lives in the past), having a culture that encourages young people to reject received wisdom & tradition (or to at least treat those things as incidental) will, I think, inevitably lead to a great many more people feeling unmoored, anxious, depressed and tending to despair. The gender identity movement that we’re seeing now is functioning as a religion for the increasing number of people who have given up on the more traditional varieties. But since it’s based on a denial of reality (and is inherently narcissistic in exalting the self), it’s ultimately not going to reduce the dissociation from one’s body (and from what I would say is one’s actual true self) and disconnection from the rest of society that leads to despair.
These are great comments. You've tied together a variety of influences and shown how they combine to create the problems you talk about. This should be a full length article. Well-done.