Many people I talk to seem to love deep things of life. From death to consciousness, it seems many want to find time to sit and talk about it…until I actually talk about it. I find that most people innately want to know about why they exist, where they go after life and other deep matters, but their minds are too intoxicated with other things. I myself have never felt like a “normal” individual when it comes to my desires and likes. I’m overly obsessed with deep matters. If you want to talk about the Panthers, I probably will last maybe two minutes tops, on such a subject. If you want to chat about the human mind, you caught my attention for hours. In fact, I’ve been so obsessed with the universe, consciousness and philosophy that I’ve had a few bad dates because instead of talking about each other’s families the whole time, I nose-dived right into religion and mysterious of the universe. My mind is so far outside what most people are in. I don’t see reality for what most people do, I see it apart. I’m always looking at reality outside the box, not from an internal perspective.
Social Media vs. Content
I don’t care much for clubs, bars or big social gatherings. Small talk is slightly painful. Nothing about my consciousness considers being drunk as cool. Nothing about my consciousness thinks toxic is cool. I never look at someone partying or having “fun” and think “if only I was there”, ” if only I could be doing that”. I’m overly obsessed with making the biggest impact I can on society, and I realize that the hourglass of this life is constantly dropping sand. We live in a social media society that is strangling people’s emotional well-being daily. To me, social media is something I use as a tool to comprehend society more, to see what people are doing in the modern world. When I scroll down a feed on social media, I frankly see a bunch of individuals who lack comprehension of what happiness is, constantly seeking a high through validation. Constantly needing validation from their outward appearance as they manually attempt to force happiness into their lives. The ability of finding balance in life is such a constant struggle for millions as they go from high to high. For me, much of social media has become a collection of unhappy people, all fighting for attention all while tossing happiness in the back seat.
In 2009, Facebook initiated the “like” button for their followers. This, to me, was the start of the deterioration of peace for millions of young adults. Facebook was followed by Snapchat/Instagram and now TikTok. If anything, the validation and attention seeking aspect is thicker than ever before. The problem is we have a nation of people who either won’t admit the toxicity of social media or just accept its negativity.
Logic vs Emotion
It almost seems that I’m sitting outside the box of reality and am looking in, seeing just how deeply confused and illogical society is. Only a losing society chooses emotion over logic. Logic always wins and doesn’t care about your feelings. Imagine with me if I walked up to you and said ” I’ve been thinking a lot lately, lost countless hours of sleep but I’ve finally came to the conclusion that tornados need to stop happening. I don’t like them; they kill people and I realized that we need to make a movement against tornados”. Then, what if I began to push a narrative against tornados, giving statistics and crying on social media posts in hopes of ending this rude part of mother nature. I send in documents to political leaders to pass bills against tornados. What would you honestly think of me? Would you support this cause? Would you say “you know what Jarom, you’re right. it’s wrong and clearly biased against humans”. No, of course you wouldn’t. You’d laugh at me and think I’m genuinely delusional. You’d not even think much of me because it sounds so ridiculous. Now come back to this moment with me…this is no different than how modern society works. You could swap out a number of things with “tornados” above and the logic of how society works doesn’t change. Reality is what it is. The world and nature are set in stone. People’s attractions, tastes, desires and sex are all included in nature. Nature doesn’t care about your feelings. We, as a society use words and emotion as our sword in a failing attempt to change something, that will never change. Imagine trying to change something impossible? Do you consider that a worthy use of your time?
Are You Honestly, Happy?
Consider where your mind is at. It takes an honest soul to sit back and ponder if they’re actually happy in life. Even the most genuine people will lie to themselves on this basic question. Are you constantly needing validation? Are you always looking at other people’s lives, feeling a bout of sadness? Are you always anxious or overthinking? Are you enjoying the journey of life or are you in a constant state of waiting for the future? Do you honestly feel content with who you are, in this exact moment?
The reality is most people will receive a failing score on these questions. We as a society are failing miserably when it comes “happiness”. Why is this not spoken about more? Why are we losing so bad? How could millions upon millions of people have no comprehension of the power of their minds to content and peace?
Let’s toss a few statistics out here. Consider that drug related deaths have more than tripled since 1999 in the United States (1). in 2019, a study was conducted that focused on the percentage of single parent homes in various countries. One hundred-thirty countries were involved in this study and the United States came out on top with 23 percent of homes having only one parent. for comparison purposes, China was 3 percent. (2) In a paper written in 2000, they discovered that a child in the 1980’s had more anxiety than a child who was a psychiatric patient in the 1950’s. In both children and adults, the rise in anxiety was dramatically higher in the 1980’s (3). From 2008-2018, a long-term case was accomplished, having confirmed that anxiety is rising year to year (4). From addictions to anxiety, most serious issues as a society are not getting better. In fact, they are dramatically getting worse. How shocking to know that people in the 1950’s, who just came out of a world war, had dramatically less anxiety than people in the 1980s? Yes, this does matter to us now, considering that statistics also show that it has only blown up more since then. Imagine if we did a study of the 1950’s with the present day? with social media? How ridiculous would that be?
Not just the mental health of the nation but the fatherless homes, drug addictions and other issues rock the happiness of millions. It’s almost as if people are obsessively looking for peace, happiness and content in everything except themselves? That one day they will finally take their last puff of drugs? That one day they will finally get to their last photo on social media, that will finally end the need for validation? That they can strategically find happiness through an alternate route that even reality doesn’t know about yet?
The Current State of the Nation
The nation is in a mental and emotional battle, one that is destroying happiness by the millions. We have a nation of depressed, anxious and unhappy people. A nation of people who don’t have comprehension of what content even is. Millions of people who stiff-arm happiness in exchange for pleasure and high. Millions of people who justify bad behavior, thus leaving them sad and confused. A deep unbalanced obsession with their bodies and physical appearance. Millions of people who lose all value of the present moment in exchange for a future happiness, that never comes. People are on vacations, already thinking about their next vacation.
The sun will still rise tomorrow, sky will be blue, and oceans will still be salty. Nature and mother earth doesn’t care about if we’re happy or not. The laws of nature from attractions to the consequences of bad behavior will still continue to happen, every single time. There is no fooling reality. It’s up to us as a society to find happiness and act accordingly. We need to make some dramatic changes. We need to have a full comprehension of what happiness is. We need to stop obsessing over physical appearance and value intellect. People should stop losing their morals for “liberation” because reality doesn’t care if it’s what you want. Lust needs to be sucker punched and left behind because it has so many people on leashes like dogs. The nation needs to let go of seeking validation and grab onto peace. No, you don’t need to be with someone to find happiness, you can do that entirely alone. People need to find happiness from within, independent of anything or anyone else.
I question if anxiety and drug overdoses have risen so much thus far, how will it be in a hundred years? two hundred years? What are the poor future generations in store for? I’m not a betting man but if I see a graph and it’s only going up, I will gamble that it will only continue that way until something changes. How interesting that as technology gets better, our happiness seems to get worse.
-Jarom
1: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “National drug involved overdose deaths”:2021 (number among all ages by gender 1999-2020)
2: “U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households” by. Stephanie Kramer. December 12, 2019,https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-children-more-likely-than-children-in-other-countries-to-live-with-just-one-parent/
3. The Age of Anxiety? Birth Cohort Change in Anxiety
and Neuroticism, 1952-1993. by Jean M. Twenge. (Case Western Reserve University) Journal of personality and social psychology: 2000, vol 79, No.6, 1007-1021)
4. “Trends in anxiety among adults in the United States, 2008–2018: Rapid increases among young adults” authors : Renee D. Goodwin,∗ Andrea H. Weinberger, June H. Kim, Melody Wu, and Sandro Galea. published online Aug 21, 2020. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7441973/
NO ATTACHMENT IS FREEDOM 