I think that a large portion of society has gone insane and I see the need for social withdrawal as a mark of sanity. It reminds me of this Aldous Huxley quote:
"The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted."
I find that a lot of highly socialized/extroverted people seem mentally ill - They tend to resort to common catch phrases to express themselves. They don't seem to have their own opinions about anything. They never seem to be able to justify the thought processes which led to their decisions or beliefs - Their line of thought about anything tends to be short and tends to link back to mainstream media rhetoric or religious dogma imposed on them by authority figures. They seem incapable of even basic self-analysis or introspection; they are only able to judge themselves and figure out what they want through the opinions and feedback of others. Also, they seem to lack creativity.
For me, this is pretty obvious because I know enough sane people that I can see the difference. Spending time with sane people feels great and is fulfilling. Spending time with normal 'highly socialized' people feels terrible. It's just very difficult to find sane people these days... Especially within certain social groups, many people are just incredibly fake and incapable of forming a genuine relationship.
Modern psychiatry doesn't have a very good definition of normal. A behavior is considered a mental illness when chronic fixation and/or financial distress is involved. That's broad enough to account for plenty of "normal" behaviors.
I find these takes pretty silly, if you look at them in a historic perspective.
Is it more human to live in a village where the local feudal lord has right of life and death on everyone? Where people are bought and sold as cattle with the land they are forced to live on?
Is it more human to live in a kingdom that will go to war with another because someone stole someone else's woman, or because they are arguing about whom is the son of whom? You are minding your own business, until one day some authority drafts you and suddenly you're in a field with a heavy pole, shouting that you'll butcher or be butchered in the name of something that makes no difference to your life.
Is it more human to live as a slave and drag massive rocks day in and day out, in order to build funeral monuments to some "living god"?
An ever-increasing percentage of the world population lives in the best of times - something undeniably demonstrated by the enormous demographic rise. There are more humans that ever, how can you seriously argue we are "less human" than before...?
Although these times seem less fair, I feel that these societies made more logical sense when you consider people's beliefs at the time. For example, people thought that kings were divine beings chosen by god(s) so that justified why they had all this power, status and wealth. Nowadays it's difficult to make sense of why things are they way they are... Once you factor out the religious framework and you factor out the false narratives about success and power being attained as the result of hard or intelligent work... The modern social structure doesn't seem to make any sense.
It all seems to be about luck these days. Why should randomness determine everything and why should we pretend that our social structures are based on anything but meaningless randomness? Part of the mental illness of modern society is that we're constantly pretending that random events mean something.
> Is it more human to live in a village where the local feudal lord has right of life and death on everyone?
Certainly, marginalized communities probably feel this was about their local police force. How do you think people feel about the police during the Uvalde shootings?
> Where people are bought and sold as cattle with the land they are forced to live on?
People live in expensive cities because that is where the jobs are and where they live are controlled by landlords who were eager to evict them during the pandemic until some cities enacted eviction bans for a time. Private equity are buying entire neighborhoods to rent them out. Sure, in theory no one is forced to live anywhere, but in practice they are.
> Is it more human to live in a kingdom that will go to war…
You mean the War on Terror? The proxy wars against communism (e.g. Vietnam)? The World Wars? The numerous conflicts the US fought to overthrow democratic elected leaders in South America and the world to install dictators more aligned with US business interests (for their oil, their resources, to “liberalize” their economy so US multinationals can take over the local economy)?
> Is it more human to live as a slave…
Is it more human that productivity has increased 10x in the past decade but wages have been stagnant? Is it more human that we are increasingly forcing people to have bullshit jobs when automation could do it better and faster and we could instead re-distribute the wealth robots make into a UBI so that everyone could enjoy a life pursing their real passions?
> An ever-increasing percentage of world population lives in the best of times…
An ever-increasing amount of the world are living under a dystopian nightmare where people are being dehumanized and the planet being made unlivable all so arbitrary numbers on a spreadsheet gets bigger and bigger.
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The problem is not that we feel less human than we did before, but that we don’t feel more human now. With all of our progress and advancements, with our increasing understanding of ourselves and our world, why isn’t the world more human (more humanistic)?
"The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted."
I find that a lot of highly socialized/extroverted people seem mentally ill - They tend to resort to common catch phrases to express themselves. They don't seem to have their own opinions about anything. They never seem to be able to justify the thought processes which led to their decisions or beliefs - Their line of thought about anything tends to be short and tends to link back to mainstream media rhetoric or religious dogma imposed on them by authority figures. They seem incapable of even basic self-analysis or introspection; they are only able to judge themselves and figure out what they want through the opinions and feedback of others. Also, they seem to lack creativity.
For me, this is pretty obvious because I know enough sane people that I can see the difference. Spending time with sane people feels great and is fulfilling. Spending time with normal 'highly socialized' people feels terrible. It's just very difficult to find sane people these days... Especially within certain social groups, many people are just incredibly fake and incapable of forming a genuine relationship.