Up until the last generation, you didn’t even worry about what you were going to have for dinner. Your option was whatever was available. You spent the day making that thing. You ate. Now you have to make decisions on every little thing in life because there are options and choices for everything in life. We have not yet evolved quickly enough to handle this many choices and decisions, as lame and unimportant as they may seem.
"""There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner- for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable."""
Their choices are rat, mouse, or nothing, but they do have choices, and I think non-fictional characters would typically have more palatable choices about what to have for dinner, when using this age-old common phrase, 230 years ago.
Also it's quite rude of you to dismiss an entire generation with this belittling rhetoric. Mental health is a really, really big deal.
In Game of Thrones director had a chance to make the dwarf (protagonist ) really ugly, like in the books, but they chose a good looking actor.
Same for Harry Potter, Hermione was supposed to be meh.
Now most actors in popular media are good looking to an uncanny level. Antagonist are beautiful too (in GoT as well).
It's not surprising if this negatively affects the psyche of the everyday person.
- People who crave validation seek good looks. They want to be accepted.
- People who crave status seek good looks. They want to be awarded.
- People who crave admiration seek good looks. They want to be desired.
There are so, so many more possible reasons and motivations, and it highly depends on the individual. Someone could have all of the above or none of the above and still obsess over looks. Someone could obsess for different reasons in different contexts or with different moods.
It's not based on some infantile monkey-see-monkey-do obsession with media.
Nowadays knowledge about mental health issues is widespread in the population, somewhat normalized and leading to people seeking help.
I consider it realistic that depression did not actually increase, its just more people showing up in the statistics.
in our household we treat all overly broad, trendy statements like this one with a huge grain of salt
the difference between rates of diagnosed major depressive disorder (MDD) vs the past has much more to do with a combination of the diagnostic criteria being refined [1] over the years and the increase of screening [2] during your annual checkup (something physicians were recommended against doing as late as the 90s). you know how your PCP asks you now how you're feeling, if you've had thoughts of self-harm, had any loss in appetite, or have given up your hobbies? that's the one
if you need to blame it on a social trend, there's a sharp correlation between the rates of suicide in the USA [3] with the transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% of people to the top 1% [4]. as they say, correlation is not causation but it is one of the best indications that it might be. smarter and much better trained people than I can probably do the in-depth research and analysis needed to make that claim
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t5/ [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3291670/ [3] https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/data/index.html [4] http://blog.oxfamamerica.org.s3.amazonaws.com/politicsofpove...
Strictly blaming depression on sociological factors is demeaning to those people with mood disorders. What about diet? What about nutrition? What about EMF’s? What about Covid infections?
This blow hard with his three points, always three points by the way, is minimizing depression, and all people with mental illness.
Inequality, injustice, war, climate change, lack of opportunity, loneliness, destruction of social systems by technology, decay of community values and the promise of a worse not better future. Is that why or is it something else?
They are indeed just people doing their thing with their families. All of them dressed normally and drove upper middle class cars most of the time, leaving the expensive cars at home. Some had expensive hobbies, all traveled a lot.
None of them appeared anything like the ultra-wealthy stereotypes that people develop from watching Shark Tank and Succession while scrolling through Instagram photos of influencers posing on private jets. Most of them were pretty nice people who were actually active in improving their communities, mostly around schools.
Pretty boring, really.
Of course, most of history didn't even have concept of depression or a sizeable count of medical professionals to diagnose it.
bluefirebrand•1h ago
I'm certain that they are a symptom, but I am unconvinced that they are a sole cause for this
Edit: Obviously not a psychologist, but just from what I observe: People have had way higher expectations from life than ever before in the past, and life has not really been meeting those expectations.
A lot of people I know simply aren't going to enjoy the same luxury that they grew up expecting, being told they would have, that they were "promised".
EA-3167•1h ago
bluefirebrand•1h ago
I was honestly just talking about "people used to afford a house and family with two vacations per year on a single income, now people can't even afford a house on two incomes" which seems to be a common refrain nowadays
I know a lot of my friends and peers believe they have worse standard of living than their parents did at the same age, and the data does seem to agree with them. Existence of smartphones is a nice convenience but it doesn't seem to offset being able to afford a house or flights and hotels for vacations
thegrim33•1h ago
EA-3167•37m ago
If you look at the data what you see is that people have more, want more, and spend more. People didn't necessarily fly to Europe, maybe a vacation was a local seaside, a road trip, or something similar. Heck even for the same vacation to the same place you pay more today because supply and demand lets it happen; you'll pay 250% more for a trip to Disney now than you would in the 1970's, but then again the global population has exploded along with the population globally that can afford to go to Disney.
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/05/25/the-size-of-...
I know that everyone wants to believe in some kind of quick political or economic fix, but it just isn't that simple. If you want to spread out the existing wealth for everyone then the average standard of living would drop. If you want to raise that standard of living while extending it to more people... well, good luck?
bluefirebrand•6m ago
Sure. Let's compare to the 90s.
According to Google, New detached homes are 10-20% larger in square feet today than they were in the 90s.
Also according to Google, new detached homes are 3.3x more expensive, inflation adjusted, than the 90s. Of course mortgage interest rates play a part here too, but that's a really bad starting point
And that's just for starters.
There are also places in the USA where the minimum wage has not increased since the 90s, and there may actually still be people trying to get by on a wage of 5.50 an hour.
I know all of this is oversimplifying things to an extent. Economics is hard. But it's not that hard...
wahern•1h ago
Nobody is seeing how the wealthy live. They're seeing caricatures of how people imagine the wealthy live, or sometimes the extravagance of the nouveau riche living out those fictions. And even when they get glimpses of actual wealth, like all forms of entertainment (including rage bait) they're seeing highly compressed slices that only superficially reflect the fictions.
And the same is largely true for every class and group depiction. People forming expectations based on digital content (social media videos, but even "news" stories and narratives) are bound to be confused. Over time their expectations simply won't match the way reality unfolds, but they don't understand why. This helps drive conspiracy theories, both on the left and the right; narratives are concocted to explain the fictitious universes people are living in.
EA-3167•46m ago
For example the people in Fnideq, Morocco can see how people in Ceuta are living directly, and media deptiction (including quite accurate ones) of how people live in Spain. Now while you or I would find both to probably be a significant lifestyle downgrade, to a destitute young man in Fnideq it's literally tempting enough to risk their lives to bridge that gap.
Wherever you are in the world you now have a window into the possibilities, the lifestyles, the leisure, the lack of humiliating poverty that others experience. It's not just human nature to see that and want it, it's primate nature.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2141866/
win311fwg•23m ago
What are they seeing? I admittedly have yet to meet a billionaire (that I know of), but I've seen plenty of deca- and centimillionaires out in the wild. They were just doing mundane things like eating at McDonald's or sitting in the stands watching their children/grandchildren play sports. They were just regular people living regular, every day lives. If I didn't already know who they were before seeing them I'd have never guessed they were so wealthy. My sense after seeing that was that the wealthy are just as boring as I am.
EA-3167•14m ago
So yes, when you see them, it's because that segment of their life and yours share a common point, but not a common trajectory.
win311fwg•6m ago
You're right that we won't see everything, but the discussion taking place here was specifically said to be about what we do get to see and the sense that brings. And what I've seen and the sense that gave is that being wealthy is nothing special. I mean, I'd take it over life on skid row, but I'm not sure I'd care to trade it for my modest life. There is no obvious step up, as fun as looking at substantially larger numbers might be. Like you say, the things I don't get to see could change that calculus, but since the original comment being replied to explicitly defined the conversation to be about what we do see, that's moot. No need to change the subject.
brbrodude•58m ago