Why Our Culture Is Making People Unhappy...

[maxmaxCity]

[h=2]Alan Watts gave this speech decades ago and most of it rings true still today. Eerily, it almost seems like it may be even more true today than it was when he delivered this speech in 1970. In this short 5 minute video, Alan goes into what is wrong with our culture. [/h]
http://www.ouramazingworld.org/spirituality/why-our-culture-is-making-people-unhappy


What do you all think ?

 

[-=SS=-]

I'm writing an essay at the moment and when I was researching material I read a line in the book, published in 1971, that stated "researchers believe that by the year 2000 AD we will be working 30 hour weeks in the UK, and 4 day weeks in the USA". Amazing that actually we seem to be going in the other direction these days. For all our technological progress we seem to be going backwards.

You have to wonder what our society would be like if we didn't have TV or flickering screens of any kind. How long would we put up with this nonsense, I do wonder.

 

[psood0nym]

I'm reading a book by Matthieu Ricard that delves into this topic. Ricard is a Buddhist monk and biologist who has been coined “the world's happiest man” by Time magazine and exhibits EEG readings of gamma waves (indicative of intense alertness) that are THIRTY times as strong as those of normal controls (Lutz 2004, Harrington and Zajonc, 2006, Begley 2007) – so I tend to think he's correct in his assessment of our culture's problems.

He notes:

-Depression is now 10Xs as prevalent as in 1960
-The mean age of first onset depression 40 years ago was 29, now it's 14
-Suicide is the cause of 2% of deaths worldwide, more than war and murder combined. It's the second leading cause of death for teenage girls in the U.S., fourth for boys. It's risen 260 percent in Sweden since 1950.
-Between 1950 and 1980, reported crime rose 300 percent in the U.S., and 500 percent in the UK. Though it's declined since, it remains profoundly higher despite vast improvements in external standards of well-being (medical care, buying power, access to education, etc.).
- In 1950, 58 percent of those survey stated they believed most people could be trusted, but by 1998 that figure had dropped to just 30 percent.

Ricard's brain waves being measured by EEG electrodes during a state induced by objectless compassion meditation.​

His sociological diagnosis is along the same lines as Watts', though he doesn't lean nearly so heavily on television as a contributing factor (more like viewing habits are symptoms of deeper phenomena). Rather, he references positive psychologist Martin Seligman, who has stated our ethos of unwarranted self-esteem, self-victimization, and rampant individualism is centrally to blame.

A sense of meaningless ensues when there is no attachment to something larger than oneself. We try to sate this void within our egos with solitary excesses, but working desperately to feed the empty concept of the self invariably leads to deep spiritual fatigue and existential dissatisfaction. Our economies are increasingly propelled by efforts to satisfy desires issuing from bankrupt perspectives, driving us into narcissistic states of isolation and thereby making the diseases of our affluence largely predictable.

Ricard's book is “Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill.”

 

[malakaix]

That's really interesting psood0nym, thanks for sharing that.. i need to check this out.

EDIT:

Actually i remember this guy, i watched a TedTalk by him a while back "The Habits of Happiness" his background and story is quite interesting.

 

[Shimmer.Fade]

A sense of meaningless ensues when there is no attachment to something larger than oneself. We try to sate this void within our egos with solitary excesses, but working desperately to feed the empty concept of the self invariably leads to deep spiritual fatigue and existential dissatisfaction. Our economies are increasingly propelled by efforts to satisfy desires issuing from bankrupt perspectives, driving us into narcissistic states of isolation and thereby making the diseases of our affluence largely predictable.

Qft

 

[psood0nym]

That's really interesting psood0nym, thanks for sharing that.. i need to check this out.

EDIT:

Actually i remember this guy, i watched a TedTalk by him a while back "The Habits of Happiness" his background and story is quite interesting.

Empirical measurements of his brain activity, along with those of other similarly experienced meditators, are unprecedented in neuroscientific inquiry. I've also been reading works by Paul Eckman, a preeminent researcher in the study of emotion and facial expression. He's found that experienced meditators are far and away the most accurate at perceiving "micro expressions," subtle muscular movements in the face lasting only fractions of a second which betray what we are feeling even while attempting to suppress emotion. There is a strong correlation between this sort of empathetic ability and subjective well-being. Using fMRI, it's also been found that some meditators can suppress the "startle response". It was believed humans could not help but feel an aversive emotional reaction to a sudden deafening noise. Though the meditators' physiological reactions were the same as normal controls' their brains did not exhibit activity reflective of a negative emotional interpretation of the jarring stimulus, which until then had been found universally.

There are innumerable opinions and philosophies on how to achieve happiness but few have subjected themselves to scientific scrutiny, and to my knowledge none have demonstrated anything near the apparent merits of those espoused by Ricard, his antecedents, and contemporaries.

 

[Foreigner]

I'm writing an essay at the moment and when I was researching material I read a line in the book, published in 1971, that stated "researchers believe that by the year 2000 AD we will be working 30 hour weeks in the UK, and 4 day weeks in the USA". Amazing that actually we seem to be going in the other direction these days. For all our technological progress we seem to be going backwards.

You have to wonder what our society would be like if we didn't have TV or flickering screens of any kind. How long would we put up with this nonsense, I do wonder.

Problem is that the original sales pitch, that technology would make our lives easier, was a lie. They never intended to lessen the human burden,but maximize productivity. Thusly, we have machines doing a lot of our work for us but humans are still expected to work more than ever. The growth model is really out of control and greed is at sickening levels.

Things are going to get really ugly in the coming years. Unfortunately a lot of people are going to have to die to restore balance, and no one wants to think about that. So we go blithely forward

 

[SixBuckets]

Depends what you mean by 'our' culture. Most biracial/multiracial people who have a foot in two cultures will tell you that all the others have rates of mental illness and stress that are just as high - Western countries just pathologise it more.