Submitted by polpotisevil2 in MentalWellbeing
I'd like to preface this by saying what I am writing about is something I have personal experience with and I am not trying to disparage or diminish any isolation/alienation/loneliness occurring from other sources, just that this form is becoming more common in today's age and is one I have personally dealt with.
With today's era phones, computers, and other forms of technology are rapidly expanding and dominate many people's daily lives in some areas of the world. Where I am from (the USA) it is plainly evident that it has had a major impact on culture, which is not a surprise. Next time you find yourself sitting in a lobby, maybe at a doctor's office, maybe even just in the waiting line at a restaurant, look around. You will likely see many if not all people staring at their phones, or the TV's pasted around like wallpaper. Not many will be having discussions, or be talking to each other. If they do, they may just exchange a couple short words with the person they came here with, or exchange "excuse me" or some other pleasantry with a stranger. Not that this is always the case, but it is clearly becoming incredibly common and will become more so over time.
People spend entire careers on computers, become addicted to video games, porn, news articles and the like, divulge hours and hours of day into their screens. Hours and hours lost to the internet and time taken away from real human bonding.
I will speak briefly on my experience with this. As a little kid, my hobby was reading. A few years passed and into my double digit years growing up I started devoting more and more time to computers and video games. I became extremely enthralled using them, and any and all free time I had I was staring at some type of screen. Around 18 I made a major change in my life after realizing how purposeless this all was, and it is my opinion to this day that a computer robbed me of a decent upbringing.
The loneliness I felt was very real, the alienation from the world I felt was very real, I did not enjoy my time off of a screen.
Nowadays kids are being given these addicting and damaging screens at extremely young ages. It is becoming a common child-"raising" tactic to hand children screens so that you conveniently don't have to deal with them. In a chilling example of only one of the major outcomes that can come of this, I recently heard an 8 year old child screaming "REEE" (it pained me greatly to type this, hopefully I don't have to explain what that is). And no, it wasn't a coincidence. I know this child's parents through a friend.
I will not explain how isolation and alienation from the world in such extreme degrees are harmful, I can hope you understand this. But what I am getting at are two things:
People talk about "therapy" and such to help people mentally. I see how this may work for some people, but there is nothing more powerful than a caring friend, one who you can truly trust and who has your back, no matter what happens. A solution to all this isolation is just the opposite, it is getting to know people, it is caring about other people, is having someone who can help you through hard times. It doesn't have to be a lot of people. You don't have to be popular, one meaningful friend can make a world of difference. That is the best therapy
And second, modern technology has many implications for the whole world. And it should be stated that getting rid of technology does not solve everything by itself. But for those who feel like anti-civ positions are ridiculous, I ask that you please pay attention to what is happening and be aware that you must deal with what you create, and you are creating a monster.
a_perfect_map wrote
Hey I feel you, you aren't alone in going through this. It was really scary to see mass computation happen, so disturbing how very few people understood that it was a new kind of aggressive colonization, an invasion in every sense of the word. Most of North America and Europe are probably hyper real now lol.
We are moving from disciplinary institutions to a holistic system of surviellance and control, a global panopticon with wealthy psychopaths at the center and I'm so fucking scared too.
I hope you have found some ways to deal with the alienation of living outside what is basically a mainstream hyper reality.
Don't be too lonely, you're not the only one :)