Hello,
Are you there? I know you are probably physically there. You are also paying a certain level of attention to these words that appear in your computer screen or device. But are you actually feeling this moment?
Have you ever stopped to think why do you do the things you do? From the smallest aspects of life, from dressing up a certain way to brushing your teeth. Some of these answers may come quickly to your head. Don't let it pass so quickly, though. Some of these things are just taken for granted into a subconscious level. We have been conditioned to a full state of acceptance to these rituals. What happens if we rationalize some of these objectively? Let's give it a try.
Well, there are some obvious practical implications to some actions. Brushing your teeth is a way to keep a healthy mouth and teeth. It avoids you from future pain from any complications that come about from poor hygiene. It also keeps an attractive smile as there are biologically wired predispositions in human brains to like healthy people.
Clothes, well apart from keeping yourself warm, you are in a way filling a social/culture standard to keep yourself relatable and included. Again, there is a biological predisposition to keep yourself identified with your group as this maximizes your probability for survival and reproduction.
Most of the things we do will most likely fill up this predisposition to be socially included. After all, humans are a social species. It has been shown in studies that 3 days of isolation and distractions can lead to brain damage and poor cognitive function. In the wild, the value of an animal in a particular community is likely derived from their ability to reproduce and survive. Is it that we just pretend to be civilized, individual, rational thinking entities that are really just bound to this value metric too?
I read somewhere that when looking into the level of happiness in humans, it is likely related to the amount and level of intimacy you hold with the people that surrounds you. The level of meaning you find in your daily activities and life. This should ultimately maximize how content you are with your life.
However, the amount of depression and anxiety present in humans is increasing. These psychological and neurological disorders exist for a biological reason too. To make you act in conditions of high stress, danger, or exclusion where your own survival and reproduction is being held at risk.
There must be a link between the ever increasing depression and anxiety rates and what society is currently holding as a social norm. It's probably holding us prisoners of our own lie. Given the previous happiness metric, it could be that we no longer have intimate trusting relationships and we can't find meaning in our daily life.
If you have been reading along, you just shared a train of thought with me. Together, we rationalized human action and tried to find a link or a meaning behind it. This is how my brain works at most of the time during the day.
The more I grow up, the less involved I feel with the people around me. When browsing through social media, I feel as a third party perceiving everything from outside and can't help but think to myself: "What in the fuck?" I usually try to be as unbiased and impartial when it comes to politics, philosophy, and some other subjective subjects. I feel as if I have become an expert at detecting bullshit coming from right wing or left wing media outlets. I see people commenting literally the same unchanged arguments and counterarguments for years. Everyone living on their own little reality, 100% sure that their view is in no way flawed.
I see teenage girls becoming famous for flaunting their body, being disrespectful, and just exploiting superficial and hedonistic factors for their own gain. Society is evolving and companies have to compete with each other for out attention and our time-earned money. They discovered some decades ago that the best way to sell is by forcing a compulsory purchase. How do they achieve this? They stroke those things in your brain, that are biologically wired like that, to become responsive and irrational. They go from manipulating your emotions, giving you a sense of emergency, giving you something that will aid you in fitting in, or maybe just showing you enough explicit sexually suggestive imagery that releases certain feel-good hormones so you purchase shit you don't need.
I guess that all this marketing has taken a conditioning role in our lives ever since we were exposed. We have learned to make instant-gratification decisions. All from unhealthy but sweet and fatty foods, a click-away pornographic imagery, and even receiving likes for validation that whatever you're doing is good and socially accepted.
Fucking brains, we are a slave to our most primitive instincts and we don't even realize it. The saddest part about it, it's that we are killing ourselves while doing it. Your brain was not designed for such an environment. There is literally a long term effect from releasing so much feel-good hormones from all these gratification glands. We fail to see other humans as thinking individuals that could contribute to us on a level deeper than the surface. We no longer have meaningful intimate relationships. Not with our friends, not with our significant others, and sometimes even with our own family.
I... feel as if I'm in a constant battle for not joining in. But my instincts are always kicking in. Making me feel excluded and shifting gears into survival mode. Anxiety comes into play, depression settles, my body and mind want me to conform. But I know better. I think I do.
I feel lonelier and lonelier as time passes. It feels as if I'm living in a dystopia and I'm the only one that is awake. I'm sure that is not the case. There must be people that feel just as I do. Somewhere out there, I will find you. Yeah we all know that person that is against "the system", but even they suffer from their own ego-trap.
I might be in one right now.