[archhn]

Most of us feel it. It's real. Don't let anyone gaslight you. You aren't sick: our culture is sick. (For those alone and struggling).

Social alienation is the source of much mental illnesses. Poverty itself isn't the source of most people's misery. Our society is our preservation matrix. If we cannot reproduce or at least contribute to something beyond ourselves that bears the promise of persisting, we are left alone with death.

This lonely dance with death, which I have danced for years as a poor housebound reclusive, can cause a disintegration of mind. I suspect the brain tries to rewire itself so it can find a new interpretation of life...one in which it finds a way of surviving in isolation. Many delusions can arise as a result. Also, mystical and religious experiences are common under such conditions. I've experienced them. Many strange things happen to the mind when we feel like we are connected to nothing that will preserve us. It's an unnatural, or abnormal state, which humans cannot ordinarily adapt to. We are microrganisms part of the macroorganism of society. Being alone is utterly abnormal and the brain isn't equipped to deal with it.

American culture makes the poor feel like trash. That's why so many of us become crazy lunatics, drug addicts, or vengeful people. It's the social alienation and isolation that condemns most of us.

However, this condition is not limited to the poor. Even rich people feel alienated. In fact, wealth often turns every relation into a suspicious one--is she just using me for my money? Everyone craves the sense of belonging that comes from genuine love, but it's hard to find. So we see many wealthy people, famous people, the most connected, also feeling disconnected.

Rich or poor, what matters most is feeling connected. We have a connectivity problem. One that leaves many individuals left alone to dance with death. This is what is causing the modern malaise above all things...however, the material conditions discussed by the author ultimately contribute to this disconnection.

Love is the answer, but this solution is so profound that we can hardly comprehend it. In the absence of understanding, we spend billions on psychoactive drugs and label people as "mentally ill" instead.

[seibelj]

I believe in hard work, sacrifice, and family… ideals and virtues that have provided solace and guidance to humanity for our entire existence.

It seems to be the hyper-online types that reject traditional values that are the most depressed and apocalyptic in their mindset. Myself - I look outside and the sun is shining, my kids are playing, everything is good in the world to me.

[JackMorgan]

I'm legitimately happy you are content and satisfied.

I have a half dozen coworkers who value family, church, and hard work. Most of them are stress-eating themselves to death. They binge shop on Amazon, buy cars and houses they can't afford or enjoy, and generally seem to hate going home at the end of the day. I've seen them beg to be allowed to come back into the office, so they can escape their family. They seem to have loveless marriages, and dread the weekend.

I don't agree that traditional values is the cure for all humanity's woes. Perhaps some of these people you talk about would be happier with a traditional life, but then perhaps some people with a traditional life would be happier with something more freeing.

And perhaps there's many more dimensions at play, not just values.

[anon291]

"hard work" is not a traditional value. That's an American thing which is relatively young as far as tradition goes.

Do your friends value an integrated life? Community? Leisure? These are the traditional values missing and they're so missed even so called conservatives have forgotten they exist.

[seibelj]

Yes there was no such thing as hard work before America. All of civilization sprung up from nowhere in a life of leisure where everyone relaxed, then America came around and made everyone work hard.

[anon291]

That's not at all what I said. I merely said that excluding leisure and an integrated life as similarly important traditional values is ahistorical. Work is a traditional value in western culture, but it's not the only one.

[archhn]

You feel well connected through your family. That's all people really need. As you say, your children are your world.

Some people don't have this family structure. Many come from broken homes with no good role models to look up to. They mimic their parent's maladaptive behaviors and end up in bad relationships. The degenerative cycle repeats. Many of these broken homes were the result of economic devastation or cultural disruption. Instead of going to church, for example, many families stayed home and watched T.V., completely degrading their social skills.

Also, some people think about the bigger picture. It's great that your mind can rest within the bounds of your backyard. Less parochial types can be more apocalyptic because they are thinking where we are headed. If we look back, we see the most apocalyptic events ever endured by mankind--the great world wars. If we look forward, we may see the potential of even worse things happening.

What makes matters more difficult is that comments like yours can be interpreted as saying that you are well made, have good values, have a square head on your shoulders, and others have something wrong with them. They aren't "traditional," like you--that's their problem. If only they embraced traditional values, they would be set right--put on the straight and narrow, like you. This is really an oversimplification of what's happening to some people. Material and social conditions affect how people develop.

It's easy to look at a person from a ghetto and say, "If only they had good values, all this would clear itself up. It only they believed in working hard, they would pull themselves up by their bootstraps and seize the day." I wonder why we can't whisper these magic words to people and solve their problems.

Edit: Hyper-online types are clearly looking for a connection they don't have in real life. The internet is almost like a honey pot for these types. Their rejection of traditional values may simply reflect their lack of faith in it because they saw their parent's bad marriage, or it may reflect a rebellion against the old order which seems to have failed them. Liberalism in particular is a home for lost souls looking for forms to express their discontent. It too is a honey pot for these types.

[seibelj]

It’s one thing to be raised in such a way that you have no knowledge or example of how to live a productive, healthy life.

It’s another to actively reject traditional structures like hard work and family. There is a sizable cohort of online-types that actually thinks society would be better if the government ran everything, work was outlawed, rich people went to jail, and all manner of extremely insane ideas that they blame their own problems on. They actually think the world is ending because of global warming, democracy is under attack, and doom scroll every day reading horrible nonsense that will never happen.

I would argue the human condition is to think everything is failing and the apocalypse is coming at any moment. This a frequent phenomenon throughout history and every generation has this narrative. However instead of religion now it’s environmental destruction but I see that as another type of religion.

Narcissism is rampant throughout society and no one wants to feel any pain or have to struggle whatsoever for success. We live in the greatest time that ever existed and some people are more miserable than ever.

I choose to be happy and appreciate what life offers rather than despair at things I can’t control and ultimately don’t matter.

[archhn]

It's the best of times and the worst of times. Some are taking joyrides to space. Others are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. The inequality is real and tremendous. You may blame people for their lack of work ethic, etc, but there are many reasons for nihilism among the lower classes. Especially the industrial proletariat who has seen industry shipped overseas and suffered a dramatic decline in their quality of life. Many places that were once bustling with hard working Americans now look like warzones, or even worse: post-apocalyptic wastelands, replete with drugged out zombies. Generations of hard working Americans had the rug pulled out from underneath them. The myth of hard work = success and good life have been empirically proven to be false by their own experience. The same may be said of the American farmer who has been slowly strangled to death by big agriculture. Some of the hardest working people in this country have ended up with less than nothing--drowning in debt because larger economic forces sought to crush them.

I understand that from your position, things are great. But not everyone is living under the same material conditions as you. Desperate people, who feel crushed by the system, call for extreme measures--like complete government control a la communism.

Ultimately, you have a vested interest in maintaining your worldview because it secures your serenity. Unfortunately, this unwillingness to address the grievances of others and to ignore the material reality that proves that this is not the best of times for many people, will set you up to be blindsided by the furious subterranean forces building up under the guilded surface of this country.

[seibelj]

Things were way, way worse in the past. The US fought a civil war. The cities were systematically looted and burned in the 1960s and all manner of figures were assassinated. It is far, far from that today.

It is far easier today than ever to get material support with food stamps, section 8 housing, the EITC, food banks, and things are so good that we literally can’t stop the poor masses from illegally crossing our borders in order to live here.

There is a fever dream in the woke / intellectual left in America that some long struggling proletariat will rebel. This is against the ethos and culture of America as a bootstraps, capitalistic nation that even the leaders of the Democratic Party have to bluntly reject socialism (see Nancy Pelosi’s shouting at the question).

My wife is Vietnamese and her parents were boat people. The entire extended family despises democrats and specifically faults their hatred of meritocratic education as a sticking point. The left has no idea what minorities really think because the party is run primarily by rich white people who exist in an echo chamber.

America is the land of opportunity. It will continue to be so provided we do everything we can to stop the deranged, intolerant, anti-business left from ruining what makes our country the best in the world.

[archhn]

Even if that's the case, corrupt politicians and institutions will use the disgruntled proletariat to gain power.

Also, many corporations are pushing for central government too. Walmart now is a private company. In the future it may be "The Glorious Walmart of the New People's American Union." In other words, large corporations have the potential of becoming a part of the government and retaining their status...plus the untouchability of being an arm of the government. I would say we've been set up for this.

So what may happen is this. Large institutions may use the proletariat to overthrow the middle class and institute oligarchic collectivism, like 1984. It happened in China, and clearly the elites have no qualms about their system--given our utter economic interconnectedness with them.