Mental Health Problems: “Feature,” Not Per Se A “Bug,” Of Modernity

We all a lil' bit crazy, and part of it is the mythical "system," yes.

I write about mental health a lot, which seems reasonable because I’m sure I have some mix of heightened anxiety and oppositional defiant disorder (although I think that diagnosis is only for people ages 0–18). I guess my central argument on the topic would be that burnout, a close cousin of mental health, is awful — but it’s not a “crisis,” per se. Burnout often is framed in a work context, and executives at work do not care about people burning out. If anything, they see it as “hustle” or “grind,” you know? So, it’s hard to solve mental health when jobs are so important to people, and when they subsequently burn out at jobs, no one seems to care that much.

That’s part of the bigger picture here. Consider a few things about modern society:

We spend a lot of time on screens: This makes us more “connected,” in the vague sense of the word “connected,” but it doesn’t make us more “social.” If anything, it’s probably antisocial. A few years ago I met a guy at a bar in Austin. He had a 15 year-old daughter. He said when boys came to the house, they were staring at their phones and not talking to him and his wife. They couldn’t shake hands or make eye contact. That’s a very small sample size, but is it true? Often it is. If we can’t socially connect in proper ways, mental health will obviously suffer.

Increased focus on identity and tribe: This is where “Culture Wars” took us, be it “It wasn’t an insurrection!” or “Pronouns.” There is so much focus on identity these days, and if you question identity,