Disillusionment: The new normal?
The age of disillusionment has gripped the modern world tightly — what's causing it?
Last time, I talked about the power of journaling and how the practice can transform our understanding of time and ourselves. But what happens when our sense of self and purpose and joy start to dissolve into the dangerous waters of disillusionment?
Unfortunately, it isn’t hard to be disillusioned in the modern world. In fact, it’s becoming the norm. Rates of depression and anxiety are rising rapidly — and they have been for a while, particularly among teens and young adults. Milder forms of dissatisfaction have surged in the workplace, in the political climate, in just about every corner of the internet.
Now, to be clear, disillusionment is nothing new. We aren’t the first, and we won’t be the last to get stuck in a bout of melancholy. But it’s worth considering what unique trends of this moment in time are pulling us down the nihilistic rabbit hole (and whether we should care).
The digital world closing in
People love to blame everything on social media. So, I don’t want to be another critic of the platforms that most of us find ourselves on multiple times a day (and some make a living from) — but it’s naïve to ignore their consequences.
By its nature, social media pulls us out of the present moment and into its digital reincarnation. And it’s not just social media — every notification we receive is another nail in our attention’s coffin. It’s this constant push and pull of our life versus the screen that wears us down and dilutes the moment’s real content.
And once they take us out of the flow of our real lives, our platforms then throw us into never-ending comparison traps — especially for young girls and women who are already up against tough societal standards. Several lawsuits over the last few years have put apps like Instagram under the spotlight for contributing to this exact issue.
In a seemingly more innocuous way, social media also allows smaller, conspiratorial viewpoints to gain traction and find larger audiences than they otherwise would. That means niche opinions and conspiracy theories can get a bit more mainstream, souring our worldview every time we open Facebook.
Not to mention the perfectly sane and reasonable content that simply inundates us. The modern individual is aware of so much: crippling economic conditions in a distant nation, the environmental impact of their daily commute, the dangers of being out in the sun too long. While many philosophers have argued that knowledge would bring us happiness, it seems, instead, to torment us.
Alienation from people and nature
As a result of this digital obsession, many of us have lost touch with two of the most foundational pillars of our mental health and our ancient past: community and nature.
Long ago, early humans lived in small communities of a few dozen people against the backdrop of the natural world. Now, many of us live in treeless suburbs or concrete jungles. And even if you’re lucky enough to live in a greener spot, you likely spend much of your time indoors working, relaxing, homemaking, etc.
To make it worse, we also spend hours a day on screens, often living far from family, and without a reliable social network of friends or community members. We’re isolated, exiled from the things that have grounded us the most throughout our long history.
Suburbs and cities are wonderful innovations, but they can pull us away from a vital sense of community and the natural world if we aren’t careful to plant those values intentionally back into our lives.
An overall dissolution of trust
It seems that both of the problems mentioned above stem from something deeper, something more fundamental. There appears to be a breakdown in the way we relate to each other and to the world at large.
For much of our history, humans have been devoted to something much larger than themselves. For a long while, humans were deeply devoted to religion, or an overarching faith. Later, many devoted themselves to governments and national causes and movements: the head of state, war efforts, etc. Think of nearly any crisis in the 20th century.
Today, many of us find ourselves without any of these big, all-encompassing structures to absorb our extra energy and effort. Rates of commitment to a religious faith are declining in the U.S. — and confidence in the government is at an all-time low. We feel alone in a large, indifferent universe.
Friedrich Nietzsche famously penned the line “God is dead. . . and we have killed him” to describe the existential vertigo shared by many in post-Enlightenment Europe. He was a firm atheist, and yet, he was still convinced that belief in something that explains the world seems to be psychologically essential. Without a universal belief system, we’ll be floating on a useless planet — directionless, lawless — until we can source a replacement.
That’s not to say that we need these traditional structures, or that they’re good for us — or that they’re good for the world in general. Some of the worst times in human history have come about because a group of people were too dedicated to a cause that didn’t warrant their devotion.
But at the same time, it would be disingenuous to think that the modern era’s day-to-day projects have successfully replaced the reassurance that comes with shared faith in a higher power or a leader or a historical force.
Work, of any kind, was never meant to fill this void — and even a fulfilling family life cannot take the place of a larger-than-life cause that will endure for long after your small window of time on earth is done.
Going onward
So, where does that leave us?
Ideally, on a spiritual quest to find something we can root our identity and being in — something with a bigger legacy than any of our daily activities. And yet, at the same time, we should also feel the urge to place ourselves more firmly in day-to-day, screen-free moments of nature and social connection, those moments that bring us closer to life.
Perhaps it’s an unsatisfying conclusion, but I believe these are the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century: figuring out how to root out what disconnects us and rooting ourselves in a life that grounds us.
Join me next time for one of the best antidotes to our collective disillusionment.
You have a really pretty writing style and a nice rhythm. I enjoyed reading this because of the way it was structured.
Very nice voice work too.
It's hard to throw out social media wholesale, because there is some baby in the bathwater, but it definitely distracts us from the more important parts of our (natural) lives.
A kind look at what gives humans a sense of loss when we are disillusioned by the structures around us. Thank you for sharing your insights!