It feels to me, though this could well be a socio-economic bubble thing, that people are just scrambling everywhere. Hyperfocused on something; anything.
Maybe it's their career; maybe it's their cause; whatever. But the innocence of just living, existing; hanging out in this beautiful world we call home; seems to be fading for many.
Happiness must be now, not future, otherwise future it will always be.
Society demands far too much of everyone's time, from childhood through adulthood. It's not simply enough to balance work and life, to get by most people have to spend more time working than not when sleep is taken into account (if a person gets enough sleep, many do not).
Society is a greedy bastard. It gets a pound of flesh in the long run, no matter what.
> It is, unfortunately, one of the chief characteristics of modern business to be always in a hurry. In olden times it was different.
-- The Medical Record, 1884
> If we teach the children how to play and encourage them in their sports ... instead of shutting them in badly ventilated school rooms, the next generation will be more joyous and will be healthier than the present one.
-- Public Opinion: A comprehensive summary of the press throughout the world, Volume 18, 1985
> Our modern family gathering, silent around the fire, each individual with his head buried in his favourite magazine, is the somewhat natural outcome of the banishment of colloquy from the school
I wouldn't be surprised if they were found back in Roman times - in the cities only of course since while farms do require a lot of labor they aren't as time-pressured.
I agree, a better title might be something like, "We Have Ruined Life". But I guess that's a tiny bit melodramatic.
Still, start with the subtitle - I'd be surprised if you don't relate to it:
"[A]an hour of free play is like a drop of water in the desert. Of course they’re miserable."
With just those sentences, there's nothing to indicate that the author is talking about children, and the article continues as it started. It says that children are more depressed than before, but who isn't? It says that suicidal ideation and attempts have increased among children since 2007, but that also sounds like something that adults have shared.
It points to the lack of a safety net and a lack of help for parents, but is that lack of stability really unique to parenting? Doesn't it suffuse every part of our lives, including our families?
I'm curious - does anyone here feel like you could actually rely on communal structures for anything in a time of need? Anyone in the States?
On a personal note, this sort of lack of a shared community is why I'm moving soon, although I don't seriously expect anything to be better in a different location. People are people everywhere, and maybe that's our problem - when our reward systems get hijacked to divert more and more of our time to the highest bidder, we end up collectively helpless and anesthetized.
Didn't Marx once say that "religion is the opium of the people"? Well, religious participation has been dropping like a stone lately - maybe twitter has supplanted that role. And to think that we used to use the term 'holy war' as an ironic way to talk about how people wasted their time with ideological internet arguments - it's not so funny now, is it?
> Didn't Marx once say that "religion is the opium of the people"? Well, religious participation has been dropping like a stone lately - maybe twitter has supplanted that role. And to think that we used to use the term 'holy war' as an ironic way to talk about how people wasted their time with ideological internet arguments - it's not so funny now, is it?
Reminds me of Chesterton's quote.
> For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.
It feels to me, though this could well be a socio-economic bubble thing, that people are just scrambling everywhere. Hyperfocused on something; anything.
Maybe it's their career; maybe it's their cause; whatever. But the innocence of just living, existing; hanging out in this beautiful world we call home; seems to be fading for many.
Happiness must be now, not future, otherwise future it will always be.