Tag: teen suicide

Quick Fix, Not

Here is a basic dichotomy these days.

We are inventing fools. Interpret that however you like.

Forget the industrial revolution and the upheaval it brought.

The technological revolution is on a whole other level.

There are so many new and improved appliances, processes, gadgets, vehicles out there for us. They are supposed to make our lives “easier.” And “better.” And “happier.” And more “personally satisfied.”

You feeling all that, yet? I know I’m not.

I laugh now at the early promises of “new technology.” We were all sold on how these new abilities were going to make our lives easier. The four-day work week. Paperless offices. More time for “leisure” and “creativity.” I snort in my coffee.

That ship sailed a long, long time ago.

So here we are awash in the daily frustrations and idiocy as a product of countless “technological solutions.” I’ve talked about this before.

What I’m experiencing later in life is the huge social deficit caused by diminishing face-to-face interactions. Like connection. Like getting to know each other. Like shared experience. Isn’t that quaint?

It has left us vulnerable to all manner of snake-oil salesmen. Because if we don’t know anyone well, and don’t have access to information about their track record and have never met their parents or siblings, anyone will do in a pinch. Right? We need to believe.

Ideas about belonging to a community of like-minded individuals who know and support each other seem quaint and pedantic now. We imagine, crave and seek out a community of similar seekers who might be out there for us to connect with. At this particular time, it is harder to do than it was in the past.

So what do we do instead? We join online groups. We have countless ZOOM calls. We sign up for Facebook groups with people who have causes or interests that we also believe in or care about. We “lol” and “ffs” and “FOMO” ourselves into low-grade stupefication.

No wonder FOMO is so prevalent. People are so disconnected from the ebb and flow of life and each other that the manic chase to “keep up” is reaching epidemic proportions. Young people no longer have a shared social history that taught them how to be part of a group or community.

I believe many believe the internet is the way, the truth and the life. What will happen to them if it ever fails them?

The anonymity of the internet nourishes all kinds of negatives: bullying, sexting, false information, false scenarios and facts. Oops sorry. I didn’t mean to post that. Oops sorry. I have no way to retrieve that post and obliterate it from the internet.

No problem. Instead of overcoming their shame or finding ways to deal with their pain, young people injure or kill themselves. Is that surprising?

What stupefies me is the tolerance we all exhibit in light of widespread social and psychological deterioration. Rigid, conservative, prejudicial attitudes and actions have always been with us. That needed shaking up. But the parameters of human civility and interaction were tighter then.

People once seemed to understand that humans had a limit to their capacity for enduring pain. They had enough sense of belonging that they understood their actions were a vital part of the collective whole.

How does that tee up with how you are experiencing life these days? Safe and happy with a community of people you know you can count on and who know you and support you and love you anyway? No wonder the internet and Facebook and who knows what else are awash in corrective “positive affirmations” and meaty memes that promise to guide us to the “meaning of life.”

Our heads are in such a constant twist scrambling after the next “big thing” in guidance and insight, we have collective whiplash.

My heart aches for young people today. Young people desperate for individuality and attention and belonging dye their hair fuschia, wear three inch fingernails and one inch eyelashes. They tattoo meaningful Chinese characters on their arsm.

For those for whom this is not enough, they simply pick up an AK-47 with their allowance money at the shop around the corner and go out and murder a bunch of people. That we have collectively managed to breed such troubled, alienated souls reflects our failure to inculcate the fundamental “rules” of becoming a human being in our children: with all the warts those rules contained.

I believe a majority are scrambling to make sense of life today and need to understand where we fit in it. I watch my adult children struggling to internalize the reality of out of control housing prices. Once a surefire road to financial security, more and more that is reserved for fewer and fewer. It has affected their future and family planning and stability.

Who wants to start a revolution?

Lived Experience

Does anyone else have the same problem I have? I am dumbstruck by the number of people who have lived and died on Planet Earth. Neil deGrasse Tyson says approximately 10,000,000,000 (that’s 10 billion for those of you who, like me, are numerically challenged.) Given the world population is hovering around 7 billion. or so, that represents some intense population growth in the past couple of hundred years.

All we can ever know of people who went before us are what we hear about them or stories we read about them. We make huge assumptions about who they were based on hearsay and material artifacts and what people of an earlier time wrote. Our imagination of the lives of our forebears is largely apocryphal.

Understanding how others live today is a lot like that, too. We make assumptions about people that are based on scant and usually superficial information. Or more likely, curated information. I have seen resumes that are the greatest works of fiction ever published. Scandal du jour joker and “alleged” felon George Santos is only the most recent public offender.

I often wonder what daily life must have been like in the old days. Television and movies are great for filling in holes in our imagination. In movies and on TV, we are served curated scenarios that allow us to imagine the lives and lifestyles of those who lived long before we did or very differently. And in astonishing variety. Courtiers, family farmers, aristocrats, or maybe the occasional itinerant pastor who roamed the countryside with his horse and buggy spreading the word of the lord.

What fascinates me are the assumptions we make from what we observe. We can only speculate what is going on intellectually or emotionally inside other people. Past and present. I sometimes feel this frustration watching Holocaust footage. It is not only what you see, that is horrifying, but what you can’t see. Broken, skeletal, barely-clinging-to-life bodies twisted in pain convey some of their reality. But not everything.

One can only imagine the terror and humiliation of young Jewish females shaved bald and stripped naked before being paraded in front of leering Nazi camp guards. What must those young women have been thinking? What questions must they have asked themselves? What panicky racing thoughts did they have? Was their imminent demise clear in their minds or were they actually lulled into the delusion of the gas chambers as showers?

In the Steven Spielberg movie Schindler’s List, there is a particularly poignant scene – among many – where an elegant and clearly wealthy young woman disembarks from one of the trains at a camp. She dismissively gives a healthy handful of Reichsmarks as a tip. Her Jewish compatriot is already wearing the trademark black and grey striped pajamas and humbly takes away her bag. We have only the sad look on his pained face by which to gauge his reaction.

I do not understand evil very well. I do not understand what causes a teenager to walk into a building full of precious human beings with a semi-automatic weapon and deliberately start spraying bullets. Worse, I do not understand how a creature like Alex Jones who identifies as a “broadcaster” could consistently call the Sandy Hook massacre of innocent children a hoax, let alone have anyone believe him. I cannot imagine being a bereaved parent of a child victim futilely defending against that level of evil insanity. Those parents were bullied by people who believed Jones! I often wonder how those parents have made sense of their lives.

The only explanation I can come up with is that when nature is out of balance, life goes out of balance. We are a society wildly out of balance. Important institutions that were nurseries for human souls like communities or churches or extended families and even steady consistent parenting or any kind of certainty have broken down. Combining that with the information overload of our current epoch and mass breakdown was all but certain.

How is anyone supposed to internalize enough sense of self to navigate the exceptionally murky water and future that is presented to young people today? My daughter tells me that is why “mid-century” chic is so popular. People are looking backward more than forward. She also says it is why young people spend sinful amounts of money on gaudy self-care such as colored hair and three-inch acrylic nails. It is a world of “Why not?” and “What does it matter?” It is also a world of addiction. a teen suicide epidemic, easy divorces. All are indicative of a nationwide – even global – and communal loss of direction and purpose.

All of this external frazzle puts the onus back on us to create a better way of being for ourselves and our loved ones. Find a healthy and productive path and walk it with like-minded individuals who want to live better, richer, saner lives. I have a mountaineer friend who cured her booze addiction by climbing on rock and ice faces. I saw many brave if tremulous individuals surrender their to take the white chip in AA meetings as a first step toward sobriety. I know single mothers who go without to give their children everything they can give them.

Pain and obstacles are part of life. But so are joy and love. At an earlier time and maybe still in some places in the world, the interwebs of love in which people live function well enough to hold communities and each other together.

It wasn’t so long ago that a sense of community was widespread and dependable. Not without their own issues or problems to be sure. Where they don’t exist today, it behooves us to keep our counsel and to keep looking for one or create one that works for us.