Rich people are doing fine.
Honestly, your average rich person would probably be happier if the world didn’t suck so much. They’re just too greedy/dumb to know it.
Have you seen rich people? We’d think they’d be doing fine but the consistently find other reasons to be miserable.
Too much transactionalism, maybe?
Rich people aren’t happy. From the day they’re born till’ the day they die, they think they’re happy but trust me, they ain’t.
I can’t go outside rn without a KN95 because Canada is on fire and the smoke is blanketing everything. That definitely doesn’t fill me with joy.
I nearly had a aneurysm when I hit up drive-thru for lunch today and they had a sign that starting July 1st the city of Edmonton will require a $0.15 surcharge for take-out bags.
Never mind the fact that the fucking price of a burger has almost doubled over the past 3 years, better make sure we punish people for switching from plastic to paper.
Single-use plastic shopping bags (including compostable or biodegradable plastic shopping bags) can no longer be distributed, and businesses must charge at least 15 cents for a paper shopping bag and at least $1 for a new reusable shopping bag.
Too much knowledge not enough wisdom.
It’s exhausting.
Well, it’s becoming a civilisation-wide problem. Yeah.
But hey. Do not give up just yet. Okay?
Two things I can see.
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Life in the developed world getting tougher and the middle class is shrinking
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Social media seems to make people unhappier and angrier
Major Depression was epidemic in the US back in the 90s, which prompted the SSRI boom. The problem was that few were ready to acknowledge the toxicity of normal post-industrial life, especially as the Soviet Union was collapsing and Reagan and George H. W. Bush were deregulating the work environment bact to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
So yes, the dissolution of the middle class and rise of wealth desparity were already concerns, but social media wasn’t yet a factor. This isn’t to say it’s not a factor today, especially when we use social media as an alternative to actual social contact.
The psychiatric sector is now recognizing we can’t treat people using the standard medical model, assuming people can be treated while still in a toxic home and work environment. It would be like treating a kid for asthma while he was living in the Los Angeles smog crisis; there’s a limit to how much treatment can help in those circumstances.
- Social media seems to make people unhappier and angrier
Is it something inherent to social media that’s doing that, or is it the toxic algorithms designed to drive “engagement” and ad impressions that used by commercial social media that’s doing that?
The algos, ads and click-bait engagement economy exacerbate the problem, what is a consequence of the profit driven nature of current platforms.
A big factor is the replacement of actual social contact with social media. We need to get actually interpersonal once a week or so. Some of us need hugs or dancing or meals together, and the current overworked society doesn’t really allow for this kind of engagement in its time constraints.
It’s like living on fast food, rather than home-cooked meals.