The Three Winds of our Generation
I know I said I would provide the techniques to shift towards optimism in your mind, but I think this is slightly more important. Today I want to talk to you about the three factors we see in the world right now:
Maximization of the self
Diminishing community
Declining sense of greater purpose
I think these three dimensions largely contribute to the mental health epidemic of our generation.
This realization helped me a lot after I felt exhausted of “feeling like this” after doing “everything”: I ran, I did Pilates, I ate healthy, I had friends, I had a great job, I had a boyfriend, I didn’t drink or do drugs, check check check. Sure, there is always room for improvement, but doing more exercise can’t be the difference to simply feeling OK, is it?
Nope. I hope by sharing this it can resonate with you or someone you know. You’ve been influenced by forces outside yourself. It is your responsibility - and thankfully, in your control - to bring yourself back here, but you’ve just been affected by the winds of our generation. To me, that feels a bit relieving.
Maximization of the Self
Me me me. That is the way our generation is brought up: Do what makes you happy. Your 20s are for being selfish. Focus on yourself. You come first.
I really try to be a kind, generous, inclusive person but I’ve only now noticed that I’ve been brainwashed to overweight my Self.
Our generation’s limitless liberty, choices, opportunities is incredibly positive. We’re told it’s our time to “find ourselves” by exploring new countries, trying on friends, flitting about hobbies, modifying our bodies, consuming substances. We have millions of purchase options to “express ourselves”.
*I recognize that not everyone has this freedom; please forgive the narrow-minded scope of this article for the purpose of making a point.
It is important to take advantage of our technological progress, border openings, access to knowledge, freedom - but not to let our maximal selves crowd out everything else in our lives. The me me me individualistic culture gives the illusion that our pleasures and pains are more momentous than they are, especially without focusing on a greater community and purpose.
Diminishing Community
Family eroded due to high divorce rate, increased mobility, low birthrates, more only-children. Our family community got smaller, our religious communities faded out. Parents’ focus shifted towards the achievements of fewer children. The demands of our modern day lives - work, hobby groups, networking, dating, social media keep-up - spread our not-me focus out too thin to build meaningful communities. Now with social media an even stronger isolation and loneliness penetrates our society.
We spend less time with our immediate communities, and more time on digital ones. While there are benefits of digital identities and communities, the scope of people we can “personally” compare ourselves to, has increased drastically. Those without smaller communities to focus on are especially vulnerable to this comparison. Before we compared our outfits to our classmates and neighbours; now we wonder why we don’t have Sofia Ritchie’s multi-million-dollar wardrobe.
Bear with me while I expose some vulnerabilty. While I have incredible, strong, loving friendships with individuals, I’ve never been great at having one key friend group. It’s a loss not having that mini friend-community. The freedom to move also supresses your physical communities.
My parents, who met in university, said that your partner will be your strongest community, especially if you take your decisions together - but in our age of “be selfish in your 20s”, maybe I haven’t been the best at taking decisions for the both of us. With our generation settling later in life, on average, you also forgo a key community member there.
Loss of Greater Purpose
Our generation has also seen one of the greatest shifts away from religion. Instagram is the new religion. We’ve lost what it means to be a part of something greater than ourselves. Where can we turn to now for identity, for purpose, and for hope?
In our society which places little important on anything beyond the self, a person gets scant comfort when personal loss occurs. In New Guinea, when a Kaluli’s pig runs away and he displays grief over the loss, the tribe will give him another pig. For us? We’re cancelled. Some of us have our families and a few “good ones” to turn to, but we feel we burden this person instead of sharing the weight with a community.
Shifting the Balance
Either the exponential expansion of the maximal self or a declining commons alone would increase vulnerability to depression. When larger, benevolent institutions (God, nation, family) no longer matter, personal failures seem catastrophic. If the failure is my fault, who else is there but me? The decline of the commons means the failure is permanent and pervasive. No wonder some of us have been having a hard time!
But when we have a practice of zooming out from ourselves, personal failure or imperfection seems less eternal, pervasive and important.
I could talk forever on this, but I’ll leave it here for now.
Katya