Why is everything so demoralizing?

The one thing that always seems to be missing

I’ve been frustrated recently by a deep-seated sense of disillusionment. A sense that things that used to swell with meaning and importance have been drained of it — rather quickly and ruthlessly.

While I’ve written about disillusionment before, this feeling is different from what I articulated there. What I wrote there was a bit more contained, a bit tame. We look at screens too much, we don’t go outside enough, we don’t share unifying principles of faith anymore. I still believe those all to be true (the article isn’t very old), but those reasons seem to be missing something.

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A brief critique of critiquing

There’s a big practice (here on Substack and elsewhere) of picking apart the culture. Dissecting every quote, every stereotype, everything we like and don’t like to get at some deeper message of how our culture has ruined us. I resent being part of that critique here because I don’t find it particularly useful.

Critiquing is inherently passive; it’s easy. There are always problems, things we could do better, weaknesses. Finding them isn’t particularly challenging. What’s challenging (and consequently actually valuable) is a discussion of what in the world to do about it. As an individual. As a family. As a workplace. As a community. As a country. We have enough gadflies.

And yet, there is much more inherent value in elucidating the why behind our problems. The ‘why’ goes beyond just telling us that we have another huge cultural problem that’s stifling us — instead, it demands that we investigate our vulnerabilities. Getting at the ‘why’ requires a combination of clear-eyed self-examination, empirical evidence, and the willpower to push past simple assertions to something deeper and more satisfying.

In other words, I want you to treat what follows less as an abstract and rambling social critique, and more as a personal essay on frustration, disillusionment, confusion, and counterintuitive hope that tries to get at the ‘why’ and the ‘so, what now.’

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A world stripped of sincerity

To me, sincerity is a vital part of the human experience. Slightly different from the trendier genuineness and authenticity which can easily be perverted to fit someone’s warped sense of self-actualization, sincerity comes with a halo of good intention. It’s a product of effort, good will, meaningfulness.

It’s a step beyond just ‘being yourself’ or ‘living your truth.’ It’s taking a real, positive, well-reasoned stance in the world. It’s forgoing the easy route or the lazy route or the superficial route in favor of something much richer. And it’s precisely this value of sincerity that seems to be missing from so many corners of life.

A few examples of its absence:

• A student who uses AI to write their paper and passes it off as their own work.

• A company that placates its employees with trivial rewards to get them to stay and give up more of their time and labor.

• A high school student who loads up on extra-curricular activities they don’t care about to impress universities.

• An employee who loads up on resume boosters they don’t care about to impress future employers.

• A creator who panders to specific audiences to earn money, establish their brand, build a following, etc.

• An influencer who promotes a brand they don’t like for the income.

• A writer who reviews their own work positively (and anonymously) in the marketplace to inflate their reputation.

• A wrongdoer who offers a halfhearted apology to evade punishment.

• A seller who passes off counterfeit products as real.

• A media company that publishes a skewed news story to garner more clicks.

In only a few of these cases has a person truly lied — and yet, they’ve all broken our trust, turned us slightly against them. They’ve created distance or cut off connection by abandoning sincerity.

Each of these interactions leaves us a bit jaded about the state of things. Where there’s a lack of sincerity, there’s a gap — doubt creeps up. There’s suddenly suspicion and second-guessing and turning our head back over our shoulder to see if we’ve been duped. To see if anything is real. To see if things that once held so much meaning have a point any longer.

I’m not going to say that this lack of sincerity is generational, or that it was something our culture once had and then lost through lack of discipline or will — mostly because I don’t believe that. The past is littered with insincerity and fraud. People have always been looking to gain an advantage, to get what they want at the expense of others — whether that be money, attention, good grades, etc.

These problems aren’t new, but they seem to have been amplified by a culture that prizes accomplishment, wealth, creativity, originality, and individualism. Under such competitive, dog-eat-dog conditions, we have little other recourse. To succeed and level up requires, perhaps, a certain degree of insincerity — maybe not blatant fraud, but the milder forms of insincerity that crop up in all our lives.

If well-done, this type of insincerity can work. A long resume is a long resume — even if it’s riddled with half-hearted obligations. But, in the long-term, it erodes a core part of our shared human experience. It violates our expectation of honesty, connection, truth, mutual understanding, and respect from the people we encounter. It’s perceived as a personal affront, a sign that we haven’t been duly trusted or considered. As the recipient of such insincerity, we’re diminished in the eyes of the perpetrator — and the world.

It’s an unpleasant place to be, and it seems to be a place in which we find ourselves more and more as we grow older, venture into the world, enter new circles, establish novel goals, look for extra income.

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The retreat to apathy

The world is demanding and challenging and exhausting. When a shortcut presents itself, who am I to say that it shouldn’t be taken? What harm is really caused, other than some personal offense? Are there not more pressing issues?

Unfortunately, a short supply of sincerity begets the exact same problem that produced it: joyless, cutthroat, unprincipled competition — a world in which no one can be trusted, which simply breeds more insincerity.

But a widespread lack of sincerity does something else, too. It fuels a larger crisis — that of mind-numbing apathy.

Strangely, the opposite of sincerity is not quite insincerity. It’s the dead-end of apathy. When we’re insincere, we’re still engaged in the process or task at hand. We have an aim; we’re focused. There’s so much aliveness to insincerity.

But apathy. . . that’s another beast. Apathy is slow and tired and careless and uninterested. In the absence of sincere interaction, apathy quickly fills the void. We give up. We remove ourselves from the realm of connection, closeness, possibility.

It’s this burnt out apathy that comes onto the scene when confronted with relentless insincerity. It’s how we cope with a world full of people we aren’t sure we can trust. Not only do we channel our frustration into our own insincerity, but we also pull back from all the people and things that once brought us so much meaning.

When we can’t distinguish between a piece of sincere human art and a piece of AI-generated art. . .

When we can’t determine a job candidate’s true passion amid their cluttered resume. . .

When we can’t determine the quality of a product because its reviews are both artificially inflated and deflated. . .

. . . we grow apathetic, uncertain, tired. We retreat from the world.

It’s only through classic sincerity that we can overcome such a maelstrom of apathy. Concrete, positive, well-intentioned action. The kind of action that reminds us that people care. That our actions aren’t simply for brownie points or extra money or a ticket to heaven or fame or a passing grade or approval — but instead, because we want to.

So, I urge you to find something that you want to do, something that brings good into the world, something that has some meaning at the bottom of it. And then, do it. With no expectations or constraints. A good deed, a personal project, a phone call. Action for the sake of action.

In a cerebral, fast-paced, zero-sum culture, we need your sincere action as a respite from all the noise more than anything.