Our Entire Generation Has No Hope
I want to talk about the idea of protective hopelessness, and how it is manifesting in younger generations. First though, a detour into modern mental health and Dr. K.
I think therapy went from a bad word, to a word with no meaning. You are your friend's "therapist". Men will do anything to not go to therapy. Mental health has become a meme in the internet's contentification tsunami. From what I've gathered from Dr.K's guide, mental therapy is supposed to be closer to physical therapy for the mind, but isn't because the effects aren't as obviously measurable. This viewpoint is powerful because while everyone talks about "destigmatizing" mental health, no one has provided an alternative view of mental health that can resonate.
If mental health is like physical health, than two things must follow. Firstly, many mental therapy issue can be modeled closely to physical therapy issues such as tweaking a muscle or needing to learn how to walk again post surgery. Secondly, there must be certain exercises one can do to alleviate these symptoms. One may never fully recover, i.e. many athletes struggle with injuries for the rest of their careers, but certainly ways to alleviate pain and make substantial quality of life improvements must exist. Dr. K provides many meditation techniques that fit this bill exactly, and describes how other forms of lesser proven easier alternative medicine, such as Ayurveda, can also fit nicely into this niche. Medication too can have it's place, especially for immediate alleviation, but a valid goal for many would be to restore themselves to full mental health without the need.
One such way you can "tweak a neuron" so to speak is this idea of protective hopelessness. See most ways you can tweak a neuron have to do with thought processes that yield positive short term outcomes, but lead to lower long term quality of life. Protective hopelessness is a thought pattern where instead of dealing with an issue, you declare the situation "hopeless" in an attempt to protect yourself from negative outcomes. Instead of asking that girl out, you declare yourself unlovable, and thus you never have to deal with the embarrassment of rejection. The key point is that the brain rewards this thinking since the brain rewards avoiding bad situations similar to how it rewards avoiding a bear attack. However, if this thought process persists, we not only never find a long term partner, but also this thought process starts seeping into other areas of life. Now we will never finish that jig saw puzzle, or hangout with friends, or build that idea we had. Why? Because we are unlovable, and everything we do is hopeless.
Worse still, now any forward progress gets treated with negative stimuli. Want to practice asking people out in the mirror? You're a hopeless loser. Want to ask friends for tips? You're a hopeless loser who can't event ask a girl out. Every positive improvement gets met with negative stimulation. Every positive step makes you feel worse. Since those incremental steps aren't this grand vision you have of what success looks like, you get caught feeling that all forward progress is a sign of failure. Every positive step, makes you feel more hopeless.
This is exactly how our generation feels about life, specifically work. What's even the point of working if one medical bill will ruin our life anyway. What's the point of working if we will never afford a home. What's the point of being politically involved if nothing will change. We can't pursue our passions because inflation and permanent capital have raised the cost of everything. We are dealing with an entire generation that feels behind. Every step forward feels awful, making us feel even further behind, forcing us to actualize just how awful everything is. Every step makes us realize how much work truly needs to be done, enough will never be enough.
It's hard to stop feeling pathetic in the age of social media too. Even though you know people are faking their lives, or you are witnessing the culmination of countless hours of work, it doesn't help. In fact it's worse. Internalizing that makes you feel even more behind, which makes the protective hopelessness worse.
Avoiding this trap is difficult. Learning to act in spite of what your mind tells you is incredibly difficult, but it's truly the only way forward. Meditation helps. Dopamine detoxes help. The best way I have dealt with it was to just stop thinking about the mountain of effort required to do something. Start taking life a day or two at a time. I don't need to climb the mountain, I just need to get up past the next hill.
Something needs to change at a higher level though. We need to start changing our systems so people feel they can engage in productive ways that give life meaning.