I look at so many of my single friends who are achingly lonely (late 30s to early 40s) and they all have a particular trait in common: they obsess about the possibilities the future may hold yet don’t acknowledge the hard work it would take to get there. There’s also a sort of collective delusion that if you wait around long enough, your dream partner will show up and that if a relationship takes any work at all that it should be scrapped because it interferes with “just being an individual”.
The longer people put off pairing up, the harder it seems to accomplish.
I think mainstream media has really warped a couple of generations of people’s priorities. Extended adolescence and chasing hedonism is now the norm.
My friends who eschewed that in favor of more traditional long term relationships, compromise and building family over Instagram followers are decidedly more content and less anxious.
I suspect as my generation ages these effect will amplify.
If these people are actually your friends, maybe you should show them more respect and stop assuming that the reason they are single is that they are less mature than you and chose to “chase hedonism” and “Instagram followers” over long term relationships. Despite what you might believe, it isn't easy for every person to find a long term partner, and not everyone wants to do it at the same point in their lives.
I’m not assuming anything, they’re friends I’ve know for many years and I’ve been there with them as they’ve made these choices. I’d like for them to be happy but there’s only so much you can do.
I think the problem I’m describing is pretty common amongst gen x and millennials.
Sure, but I think peoples' definition or image of self-centeredness has been obscured by societal norms. At least here in the US, it feels like one of our cultural hallmarks is the ideal of the "self made individual". If it is normalized to see oneself as apart from others, it becomes very difficult indeed to sacrifice anything for another person (and news flash, that's a big part of familial relationships).
i like your style of thinking, can you put down 5-10 bullet points of knowledge you think we should all know or sources of knowledge we should investigate.
It’s an extremely prescient, outsider’s look at the tyranny of the masses.
I would also suggest studying the context of the 20th century, especially the lead up with the industrial revolution and both world wars. It’s often lost on people that Western life as defined by American sitcoms was an anomaly powered in large part by the rest of the first world being nearly obliterated. This leads ultimately into global recovery and globalism which I see as a normalization of life after WWI and WWII.
Post-modernism is good to learn about as well. I feel like a lot of people mistake modernism and post-modernism. Post-modernism can actually include a lot of things modernism rejects, such as traditional family structures. It just does it piecemeal framed in a totally different (non-religious) context.
The longer people put off pairing up, the harder it seems to accomplish.
I think mainstream media has really warped a couple of generations of people’s priorities. Extended adolescence and chasing hedonism is now the norm.
My friends who eschewed that in favor of more traditional long term relationships, compromise and building family over Instagram followers are decidedly more content and less anxious.
I suspect as my generation ages these effect will amplify.