I was talking about something similar the other day.
There’s a kind of assumption where I live (individualistic society) that people expect to be happy and they can get upset when you explain that, well, life isn’t always happy and we don’t have a ‘right’ to be happy. People’s really tend to dislike it and get upset quick if you express other emotions. Even if those emotions are based in reality.
Loved ones, for example, will insist that you tell them that you’re happy. Short of that, you have to agree with them that ‘things will get better’ and you’ll be happy soon. It’s complete bollocks. Like, there’s no willing ourselves out of climate catastrophe. It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be difficult to be happy in twenty, even five or ten years. Insisting that we’re all happy and that we’ll just keep smiling and laughing is bizarre af. The western world is doped up on some secular opium for the masses.
I can’t imagine living 300 years ago or inside a wildlife sanctuary and being told not to be anxious about the wolves, bears, and lions. We should be fucking worried and it’s weird not to be. Especially when we know that all the gurning people around us don’t accept the danger of very real dangers because to do so would involve too much cognitive dissonance.
In sum, the article highlights important research. I don’t know if we can fix the western world without addressing this psychological problem (in it’s dialectal relation to capitalism, of course). Good find, thanks.
For sure, western society strongly encourages people to wear masks and to keep their real feelings to themselves. You’re expected to conform and pretend that you’re happy or people see you as being flawed somehow. We also see an extreme version of this phenomenon on social media site like Facebook or Instagram where everybody constantly posts their best moments and everyone is collectively miserable because they think other people are having much better lives than they really are.
I was talking about something similar the other day.
There’s a kind of assumption where I live (individualistic society) that people expect to be happy and they can get upset when you explain that, well, life isn’t always happy and we don’t have a ‘right’ to be happy. People’s really tend to dislike it and get upset quick if you express other emotions. Even if those emotions are based in reality.
Loved ones, for example, will insist that you tell them that you’re happy. Short of that, you have to agree with them that ‘things will get better’ and you’ll be happy soon. It’s complete bollocks. Like, there’s no willing ourselves out of climate catastrophe. It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be difficult to be happy in twenty, even five or ten years. Insisting that we’re all happy and that we’ll just keep smiling and laughing is bizarre af. The western world is doped up on some secular opium for the masses.
The example I gave is being anxious. ‘Just don’t worry about the things that make you anxious,’ they say. (Gee, thanks.) But actually, being anxious about e.g. the traffic is entirely reasonable when we know (a) there are loads of cars, (b) visibility is low for cars and pedestrians because there are loads of parked cars, and © many drivers speed by, far faster than the speed limit, and mostly don’t slow down for obstacles including pedestrians even when they otherwise ‘follow the rules of the road’.
I can’t imagine living 300 years ago or inside a wildlife sanctuary and being told not to be anxious about the wolves, bears, and lions. We should be fucking worried and it’s weird not to be. Especially when we know that all the gurning people around us don’t accept the danger of very real dangers because to do so would involve too much cognitive dissonance.
In sum, the article highlights important research. I don’t know if we can fix the western world without addressing this psychological problem (in it’s dialectal relation to capitalism, of course). Good find, thanks.
For sure, western society strongly encourages people to wear masks and to keep their real feelings to themselves. You’re expected to conform and pretend that you’re happy or people see you as being flawed somehow. We also see an extreme version of this phenomenon on social media site like Facebook or Instagram where everybody constantly posts their best moments and everyone is collectively miserable because they think other people are having much better lives than they really are.
You can bundle Japan with them. I think the phenomenon is stretched to the extreme here.
yup
And note how western media often acknowledge that problem in Japan but then they turn around and claim in west it’s completely not a problem.