I have has this video open in a tab for ages :

There’s a lot of excellent points in it, and I’ve been meaning to addrress them, but have never gotten around to it until now because there is always something new on mny mind when I sit down to blof tha takes precedence.

But I just woke up and therefore there’s nothing but jack and shit on my mind – and Jack left town. So today’s the day.

I will follow the structure of the piece then make more general comments after.

1. Meritocracy. This is basically the Just World fallacy reworded, and it’s a fallacy that will never die because it’s easy, Assuming that every gets and is getting what they deserve really reduces your need to think because it gives you permission to bypass the entire issue of social justice. You can write off the entire issue of human suffering and social injustice all it takes it making a very easy assumption about the world. So no matter what the dominant religion, economic system, or form of government people are living under, they will think the same thing if they are doing reasonably well. But as the video says, this places a great deal of unnecessary stress, anxiety, and depression which is only compounded by the fact that the more connected we become, the more humanity we are competing with socially according to our social instincts and the higher above us the socially supreme  – famous people – seem.
2. Individualism.  I am definitely a victim of the cult of the special. In my case, it’s because I am keenly aware that I have extraordinary abilities and therefore cannot settle for an ordinary destiny. This is probably not good. But I, like the rest of my generation, was raised with the belief that we could be whatever we wanted if we tried hard enough. But no amount of ambition and industry will turn a snake into an eagle. Big time success is not in the cards for most people. We would be better off if we told kids that it is fine to dream big and follow those dreams, but it is also okay to merely seek to find a career and a niche and an ordinary life. And that doesn’t make you a “loser”. It makes you human. And take it from a disabled person : I know what it is like to look up to normal people and want to be like them, with a real life and a real job and a real family.
3. Secularism. This is a big one for me because of the opening sentence about how without religion and under individualism, we lack a conception of something bigger than our individual selves. That’s exactly true! Bang, nail hit on head. I had never thought of it in quite that way before, but it’s so true. Without a feeling of being part of something bigger and greater than ourselves, we are stuck in an egoist dead end with no idea why we are so unhappy. We nude monkeys need to feel like we are valued part of a strong tribe and an excess of individualism such as we have now blocks that. To the point where it makes people feel bad for even wanting that because we are all supposed to be rugged self-sufficient individuals.
4. Romanticism. I hate the idea that we all have that special perfect someone out there waiting for us. It puts unachievable ideals in people’s heads and tells them that real love is easy, requires no sacrifice or compromise, and that you are free to abandoned any relationship the moment it becomes less than perfect because obviously that person was not “the one” for you. People need to set their sights way, way lower and stop looking for a soulmate and start looking for someone whose company they enjoy enough to get over the rough patches.
5. The media. We all know this story well. The media knows that humans are wired to be more interested in the negative than the positive because in a state of naturte, it is way more important to know where the saber toothed tiger lives than where that nice patch of berries was. So that’s the kid of content they give us. They are, in that sense, only giving us what we want. The solution proposed is laughable though. Nobody will watch the Happy Things newscast because it’s boring. News, unfornately, has to be entertaining before it can be anything else, and emphasizing solutions will simply result in a newscast full of “Here’s a serious problem, but it’s already being solves, so why am I even telling you this?”. The real solution is to educate people on the difference between the news and reality. And remind them that the news shows them what is unusual, not what is typical.
6. Perfectability. What this hints at is one of the most deadly of the “shoulds” that make us miserable – the idea that we ‘should’ be much happier than we are, and that if we are less than blissfully happy at any point, it’s an emergency at best and a horrible personal failure at worst. People are not meant to be happy all the time. All our emotions are valid and necessary and when we attempt to avoid the ones we deem negative, we only end up making ourselves even more miserable.

All of these factors, plus other things I have spoken about in this space, contribute to the spiritual malaise of our day and age. The most obvious manifestation of this malaise is the rise in the number of people with depression like myself, but depression doesn’t always look like depression. It can look like addiction, or domestric abuse, or trolling, or any number of other ways people try to fill the void inside that modern life does not address. The true damage of this disease is massive.

Personally, I think what is needed is a new religion. One that actually fulfills people’s needs and does not burden them with inane guilt or otherwise make them feel bad for being human beings.

Barring that, what people need is to be educated on the limits of individuality and where to look when the “success” shit just is not doing it for them any more.

Maybe I should write a book called “What To Do Now That You Have It All”.

Maybe then I could be someone.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.