It is simply a fact (although many youngsters find it really hard to believe) that this is the best time to be alive in the history of human civilization. There is a multiplicity of reasons for drawing that conclusion. The current time accounts for highest life expectancy on the planet, least wars, least death from wars, least death from starvation, disease and pandemics, highest availability of food, unimaginable material satisfaction that lay at our disposal, just to name a few. Quite surprising it is to note that there is no parallel that can be drawn between the abundance of material fulfilment and joy or happiness in people’s lives.
Given it is the best time to be alive, it is to be naturally expected that humans would or at least should be happier than ever before. But the data suggests otherwise. Depression and anxiety among young adults and teenagers are going off the roof. Suicide rates are at its highest in human history. People are unhappy and unfulfilled and unsatisfied with their lives and with almost everything that they are doing in it. And its only getting worse.
Meaning — through a purpose
A little diagnosis into the situation shows a tremendous lack of ‘purpose’ and hence ‘Meaning’, in people’s lives. But why is Meaning important? What has Meaning got to do with living a fulfilled life or a life in which you find yourself more often happy and satisfied than not?
Here’s a sad reality. Life is suffering. Thus, for most of human history, humans have been trying to establish ways to conduct oneself in life to keep away from as much of suffering and malevolence as possible. Almost all sacred scriptures from almost all religions consist of this fundamental underlying meta-narrative: how to conduct yourself in the best possible manner for your own good and of those around you.
No matter how hard you try to pursue happiness, life repels it. The closer you try to get, the further it gets from you. The only way to reach any bit of happiness whatsoever, is to deceive happiness. Meaning and happiness are friends. Thus, if you can find a way to reach Meaning, chances are you might meet happiness, although nothing assured. And the best way to find Meaning is through purpose. And the best way to have a purpose is through voluntary adoption of responsibility.
As Jordan Peterson writes in 12 Rules for Life:
“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).”
Remember that time when you were sad and you really wanted to be happy, but you had no clue how to go about doing that? That’s what happens when you try to chase something you can’t. Remember that time when you were given an important task, which gave you a sense of meaning because you had a purpose, which when you accomplished, made you a little happy. That’s what happens when you chase something you can (trying to have a purpose, accomplishing which makes you satisfied, fulfilled and hence, a little happy).
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl wrote:
Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear almost any ‘how’.
Don’t chase happiness; it is only a by-product. Rather, the goal in life should be to find meaning. You can’t always be happy, but you can always do something meaningful.
Minister of Loneliness
Reuters reported in 2019, that suicidal thinking, severe depression and rates of self-injury among U.S. college students more than doubled over less than a decade. The British Prime Minister recently appointed a Minister of Loneliness! These are clear evidences of the gravity of the problem. Widely cited reasons behind this are increased drug and opioid addiction, less human interaction and more interaction with gadgets especially smartphones and young people’s fears for their future. But the overlying reason, it seems, is the adoption of a cosmopolitan Marxist pseudo-moralistic relativism (which is a weird mix) in our societies, worldwide (some more than others).
These are unwanted gifts from the left. The left’s fundamental presupposition is that the reason behind every hierarchy in society is nothing but power and exploitation of the so-called ‘oppressed’. For the left, the world is nothing but a power contest between the oppressed and the oppressor.
The problem with perceiving the world that way is that it undermines a tremendously important term; called competence. A student works very hard and secures the first position in an exam. Some other student gets the second position, someone else the third position, some also fail the exam. And so inevitably there forms a hierarchy of grades earned in an examination. This hierarchy is a result of differing amounts of competence among all students, to put it simply. In another scenario, some students bribe the professor and the administration. Those students get the highest grades. And so inevitably there forms a hierarchy of grades earned. This hierarchy, unlike the first one is not a consequence of differing competence, but exploitation of the system through power.
The left believes (and hence also wants you to believe) that the whole world runs on the second model, not the first. This as you know, in most cases is utterly untrue; because when was the last time you bribed your professor and topped the exam? The answer is never.
What this ideology does is it devalues accomplishments, which leads to less enthusiasm in taking on a task (because accomplishing your task would mean you did it through power and exploitation rather than competence and hard work), which diminishes the want for purpose, which leaves you with a meaningless and unfulfilling life where you get no credit for anything and everything you do, because you supposedly did it by oppressing someone else. It lays the perfect framework for nihilism; a taste of which we got in the 20th century (and it didn’t taste very good).
Other side-effects of this appalling ideology include the denigration of religion and nationalism, which have been principal sources of meaning and value in people’s lives for generations.
Thus, when you don’t have to serve a god, when you don’t have to serve a nation, when you don’t have to serve yourself, it ends up being the perfect recipe for a nihilistic catastrophe; a lack of meaning and purpose, hence an unhappy life.
No participation medals
Children have been taught that life is beautiful, that they can do whatever they want in life, that they can become whatever they want in life, that they can have whatever they want in life. The balloon is too bloated with innocence. The cup is overflowing with idealism. It is only when a cup is filled to the brim, the tea spills over when hit with a little force. You would need a much larger force to spill tea over from a half-filled cup. That cup is today’s children and young adults, that tea is their bloated false sense of optimism society filled them up with and that force is the ever-prevalent suffering. It is only when you are too soft, too hopeful, too assured of yourself, too optimistic that you can be hurt easily; not otherwise. And so, when you have a generation of children growing up getting participation medals, it is no wonder they get anxious and depressed and resentful when they don’t get any medal for coming 30th in life.
So, ‘no participation medals’ in schools might be a good start to solve this problem. More social mingling and less time spent on social media or less interaction with smartphones in general might be necessary steps in the short-run.
The core of the solution has to be the re-emergence of meaning in people’s lives. People again need to start serving someone (God, nation, or themselves, or something else). People again need to find their ‘why’.
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