The idea of how a tiny alteration in the amount of chemicals(matter) changes the way we feel(non-physical) always amazed me. In pre-industrialised world the values for the release of these chemicals were very different. The values for feeling good were more flexed towards natural things like enjoying dinner with your family, seeing your kids growing, enjoying the sunset, a walk in the woods, enjoying the rain, a cool summer morning breeze etc but with industrialisation everything changed, the values for the release of these chemicals too and actually life became more superficial and artificial and got more materialistic touch. Life got more stressed, more depressing. Why’s that. Why would life get more stressful with facilitation. We need to stop and think about it.
Materialistic mean our dealings are more affected by possessions rather than emotions right? Anyone with lot of possessions is considered superior. Which would mean buying more things will give more good feelings right? My answer is no, they don’t make us feel good because if we give it a meticulous look, we don’t buy most of the things because we need it or love it, like it’s not that we buy recently released phone because we love tech rather I would say we even don’t know much of it’s functions. This applies to most of the things. Then why would one stress one’s self to make more money making one’s life hell to buy all these unnecessary stuff. I think it’s because we got trapped in social comparison psychology that made us to change the value for feeling good to being superior rather than natural things. So for feeling good all the time which unfortunately everyone wants, one has to be superior all the time in comparison to one’s social world which in other words means that one must be ahead of the rest for feeling superior. This is where the real demon lies, and not in the industrialisation of world. This thing ruined our lives both mentally and physically rather I would say our everything. Ain’t we living the life of racehorses?
For example take our education system, what do we value, grades more than creativity, don’t we? That’s why we don’t produce creative people but human robots. So the rationalisation ego defence that we use to reduce our anxiety by saying that everything is kinda materialistic blaming other beings and mainly science for facilitating us is not true but making being superior the value for feeling good is the problem. And pop culture is the product of this new value which kinda put lock back on this new value. Social media, our fake selves did the topping. This ahead thing has got now so much into our nerves that most of us are depressed now, because the pandemic kinda slowed life a bit and racehorses have problems with staying calm, slowing a bit, thinking about life, and enjoying little things that really matters rather than being in race all the time.
We need to change this value and come out of this trap before we are psychologically traumatised, before any other student commits suicide. We need to stop comparing our lives to that of others. Why not compare our today to our yesterday and see improvements. It’s the only way we can come out of the horse race and live a life. So I would say slow down a bit, play a classic song, watch the sunset, and enjoy the moments and stop pretending being alive. Life is never gonna get easy but more complicated as you move on. And by the way that brain thing still amazes me how chemicals in synapses can create such abstract things.