Lord777
Professional
- Messages
- 2,579
- Reaction score
- 1,513
- Points
- 113
The 21st century has become a century of comfort. We are surrounded by smart machines that save a lot of time and good old inventions that boggle the imagination, at the end of the 18th - the beginning of the 19th century, no one needed anymore. But this is not the limit ...
It seems that the days are not far off when science and technology will be able to make everything around robotic, and we will only have to lie on the couch and communicate with a person from the other end of the planet with just the power of thought, or watch a movie shown directly in the brain, and not on TV screen. The most amazing thing is that even this will not become a miracle for us, as each new invention was previously considered. Just look at the list of incredible phenomena that are easily explained by science.
But despite all these conveniences and "miracles", the 21st century makes people all the more miserable. And all this is due to the development of science and technology. With so many devices and gadgets, we don't need anyone else. Research shows that one in four people on the planet has no one to trust. The average number of close friends we can name often decreases very quickly. And this has only happened in the last 20 years. But why?
What destroys our happiness:
1. We filter people from our lives
And this is not sarcasm. Annoyance and frustration is what fosters tolerance and patience. The more irritation we can eliminate from life, the better we deal with it.
The problem is that we are developing an amazingly vast network of technologies designed only to avoid annoying individuals. When shopping online, we avoid crowds of sluggish shoppers who lazily wander around the market and prevent us from going where they need to go, and a disgruntled supermarket cashier who takes out anger at her unfaithful husband at unsuspecting customers. By investing in a home theater with a wall-to-wall monitor and speakers in every corner of the apartment, we avoid someone else's child kicking the back of your chair and crowds of inappropriate teenagers making inappropriate comments and laughing all over the room. In a long line to the dentist, the smelly old man in the next chair will not disturb us with conversations, because we will put headphones in our ears and immerse ourselves in reading a book on an iPhone. Everything! All irritants and annoying people are filtered out!
It would be ideal if it could take all the annoyance out of life forever. But this is not so and never will be. As long as we have needs, we will have to communicate with people whom we cannot stand, whether we like it or not. But we lose this ability to communicate with strangers and endure their squeaky voices, dull sense of humor, bad smell or disgusting manner of dress. And that is why every encounter with the outside world, a world that cannot be controlled, causes a burning desire to kick someone in the face.
2. We don't have enough friends
We do not choose a place of birth. And each of us from early childhood lives in a city full of people whom we cannot stand. And we go to school with classmates whom we did not choose and who do not share our interests and hobbies. Someone is even beaten ...
But we grow up and find ourselves a circle of friends with the same interests on specialized sites and forums, or we organize our own club of fans of the game "Tanks", where only the most devoted are accepted, and we shut ourselves off from the rest of the world, which does not understand us. You can say goodbye to the tedious, awkward and painful process of interacting with people who are not like you.
But the problem is that peaceful relationships with people who are incompatible with you are decisive for life in society. Even more: relationships with people whom you cannot stand, and there is society - all these people with opposite tastes and conflicting characters who coexist in the same space and interact, very often clenching their teeth.
Some 50 years ago, all the neighbors gathered in a small, overcrowded, stuffy room of one of the lucky ones to watch TV - a new miracle of technology. There was no particular choice: either endure it, or you won't see the TV. And when someone bought a car, the whole house, or even the block, gathered around to look at it. And many of them are still assholes!
But in general, then people were happier at their jobs and more satisfied with their lives. More importantly, they had more friends. Even despite the fact that it was often not possible to filter peers by interests, and often even those who just lived in the neighborhood were called friends, they had more close friends than we can boast of today. These were people who could be trusted.
Undoubtedly, after we manage to overcome this first feeling of irritation, after this feeling of superiority called "they listen to other music and will not understand mine" subsides, there comes a feeling of the need for other people and the desire to be needed by others at a level above common interests. ... And the ability to tolerate fools and endure irritation is literally the only thing that allows us to function in a world inhabited by other people. Otherwise, you turn into emo. And this is already a scientifically proven fact ...
3. SMS is not the best way to communicate
It doesn't even take any research to understand that more than 40 percent of what is said in an SMS or email is misunderstood. The printed text does not convey intonation, emotions or other non-verbal color of the message. Because of this, a lot of difficulties, grievances and misunderstandings arise.
How many friends do you only chat with online? If 40 percent of your personality is lost in text communication, do these people really know you? Do people dislike you through text messages, emails, forums or chat rooms because you are truly incompatible? Or is it because of those 40 percent misunderstood? And those who like you?
Many are trying to make up for the difference in numbers by recruiting hundreds of friends on Odnoklassniki and VKontakte. But the problem is ...
4. Virtual friends only add loneliness
Continuing the previous conversation, it should be noted that when communicating with a person in person, only 7 percent of the meaning of everything said is conveyed directly by words. The remaining 93 percent of the meaning is hidden in non-verbal forms, including gestures, facial expressions, body language, tone, intonation, etc. Indeed, in most cases, our humor is just sarcasm, but sarcasm can only be noticed by intonation. It is not visible in the written text.
This is the main problem. The human ability to absorb the mood of others through this kind of subconscious osmosis is crucial. Children born without her are considered mentally retarded. People with a surplus of it are called "charismatic" and they become movie stars or politicians. It's not about what they say. The point is the energy that they radiate, and which instills in us a good sense of ourselves.
Living in the Text World, this is all exposed. And this has a side effect: in the absence of a sense of the mood of the interlocutor, every line we read passes through the filter of our own mood. Being annoyed, any text is perceived with sarcasm and negativity, with a thirst to be offended. To make matters worse, by continuing to communicate in the same spirit, your mood will not change. After all, people say something unpleasant all the time. Of course, despondency comes. You are entering a fight with the whole world! And at these moments we really need someone who will take by the shoulders and shake well. And this leads to the next point ...
5. We lack criticism
The worst thing about not having close friends is not missed birthdays or a sad wall tennis game. No! The worst part is the lack of real, healthy criticism.
On the Internet, absolutely strangers on forums and chats can call you "mean troll", "vile windbag", "pathetic fagot", "boring", or "upstart". But all this is completely unimportant and all these name-calling and insults should not be confused with criticism, because none of these strangers know you well enough to get to the point. Offending is someone who wants to emphasize their hatred for you. Criticize those who want to help, pointing out what is most convenient for you not to know.
It is sad that there are many people who have never had conversations like this. Outside interference, the harsh truth, these awful, awkward, twisted uncomfortable conversations, possible only with those who see right through you, are sometimes terribly necessary.
Email and text messages are the perfect way to avoid such openness. You can reply to a printed message whenever it is convenient. You can weigh all the words, choose the question that is most convenient to answer. The interlocutor will not see your face, your condition, your excitement and irritation, he will not be able to convict you of a lie. Everything is completely under your control. And the interlocutor will never penetrate your armor, will not see you in the worst light, will not recognize the embarrassment that you cannot control. Gone are the days of the usual evasions, antics, humiliation and vulnerability on which true friendship is built.
Walk through VKontakte accounts, look at the images that people create for themselves. Having made dozens of friends in a blog or forum, introducing yourself as the Lord of the Night, it will be quite difficult to tell someone about an acute attack of diarrhea right in the middle of a New Year's corporate party. You will never be able to be yourself, and this is the feeling of extreme loneliness.
6. We are victims of feelings of resentment and anger
Many will argue that there are a lot of reasons for depression: people are dying of hunger, countries are turning into Nazi Germany, elderly parents watch stupid television shows and endlessly discuss them, people are dying in senseless wars ...
But where did much more negativity come from in us than there was in our parents or grandparents? Previously, people did not live that long, and babies died much more often. Dread diseases were more common. In the old days, the only means of communication with a friend who moved to another city was a pen, a piece of paper, and a postage stamp. Now there is Iraq, but our parents had Afghanistan, which claimed 50 times more lives, and their parents had the Second World War, which took a thousand times more. Most of our parents grew up in a time without air conditioning, and our grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not have them at all.
Physically, we live much better today, no matter how we measure it ... but, you will not understand this if you read the news on the net. Why?
Let's look at it from this perspective: if some music site publishes an article under the heading "The Lyapis Trubetskoy group makes good music", and on the same day, on the same site, another article appears under the title "Music critics called the group "Lyapis Trubetskoy" the worst group of all times and peoples ", which one, in your opinion, will be more popular? Of course, the second one! Resentment breeds word of mouth.
News blogging people know this very well. Every site is fighting for traffic. Even without hosting ads, they still measure their success in terms of the size of their audience. Therefore, they carefully select only the stories that incite the greatest interest and resentment. Other blogs start retyping the same story and twisting from their point of view. You can wallow all day in this warm, stagnant swamp of indignation and never get out of it.
Only in such an environment could the stupid conspiracy theories of September 9, 2001, according to which Bush himself blew up the twin towers, and the planes were just a hologram, could appear. Having heard such conversations, every opposition leader becomes Hitler, and every election becomes an apocalypse. And this is only because you keep reading all this.
This was not a big problem before. We all remember the times when there were only three channels on TV, two of which were broadcast only since lunchtime. Absolutely all people were united by news releases that presented information from only one point of view. Some points of view were belated and twisted. Some news was generally hushed up. But everyone heard the same thing.
There are no more effective "media". Previously, the same news was simply perceived differently by different people. Today, the same news is presented in different ways. It is difficult even to disagree with something, since all the facts are contradictory. A constant feeling of disharmony with the outside world leads to growing tension.
People have always had natural ways to calm their anxiety, but today ...
7. We feel unnecessary, worthless, because we really are worthless.
There is one plus in the fact that friends are only online, but no one talks about it.
They demand less of you ...
Emotionally, you will always support them, calm them down after breaking up another relationship, maybe even dissuade them from attempting suicide. But friendship with someone in the real world adds an endless list of annoying demands: spend an entire evening fixing their computer, go to the funeral of their loved ones, drive them back and forth while their car is in the workshop, meet them on the doorstep of the apartment, just then, when you just sat down to watch your favorite TV series, feed a sandwich with the last piece of sausage in the fridge, hearing that they hadn't eaten anything all day ... But how much easier things are on VKontakte, in ICQ and on the forums ...
The problem is that the need to do something for people sits in us on a subconscious level. For the last 5 thousand years, everyone understood this, and over the last few decades, they suddenly forgot about it. We raise suicidal teens and we strive to teach them self-esteem. But, unfortunately, self-respect and the ability to love oneself appear only after appropriate actions.
Want to break out of this black hole of self-loathing? Get greasy hair off your face, get up from the computer, and buy a cute present for someone you hate. Send a postcard to your worst enemy. Prepare dinner for your parents. Do something simple, but with a really noticeable result: finally clean out the drain or plant a flower.
You are a social animal that releases hormones of happiness when you see the physical benefits of your actions. A form of stress relief through a little discomfort has always been a part of our daily life: hunting a gazelle, picking berries, climbing a mountain, fighting a bear ... But no more. This is why office work makes us unhappy.
We don't get physical, tangible results from work. But after two months spent at a construction site under the burning sun, until the end of your days you will repeat: "I built this", driving past a house. Maybe that's why mass shootings happen more often in offices than on construction sites.
The physical satisfaction of getting dirty under your nails can only come when you turn off your computer, go outside, and reconnect with the real world. The feeling that you get every time you say “I built it” or “I raised it” or “I fed him” or “I made these pants” cannot be compared to anything the Internet has to offer you!
It seems that the days are not far off when science and technology will be able to make everything around robotic, and we will only have to lie on the couch and communicate with a person from the other end of the planet with just the power of thought, or watch a movie shown directly in the brain, and not on TV screen. The most amazing thing is that even this will not become a miracle for us, as each new invention was previously considered. Just look at the list of incredible phenomena that are easily explained by science.
But despite all these conveniences and "miracles", the 21st century makes people all the more miserable. And all this is due to the development of science and technology. With so many devices and gadgets, we don't need anyone else. Research shows that one in four people on the planet has no one to trust. The average number of close friends we can name often decreases very quickly. And this has only happened in the last 20 years. But why?
What destroys our happiness:
1. We filter people from our lives
And this is not sarcasm. Annoyance and frustration is what fosters tolerance and patience. The more irritation we can eliminate from life, the better we deal with it.
The problem is that we are developing an amazingly vast network of technologies designed only to avoid annoying individuals. When shopping online, we avoid crowds of sluggish shoppers who lazily wander around the market and prevent us from going where they need to go, and a disgruntled supermarket cashier who takes out anger at her unfaithful husband at unsuspecting customers. By investing in a home theater with a wall-to-wall monitor and speakers in every corner of the apartment, we avoid someone else's child kicking the back of your chair and crowds of inappropriate teenagers making inappropriate comments and laughing all over the room. In a long line to the dentist, the smelly old man in the next chair will not disturb us with conversations, because we will put headphones in our ears and immerse ourselves in reading a book on an iPhone. Everything! All irritants and annoying people are filtered out!
It would be ideal if it could take all the annoyance out of life forever. But this is not so and never will be. As long as we have needs, we will have to communicate with people whom we cannot stand, whether we like it or not. But we lose this ability to communicate with strangers and endure their squeaky voices, dull sense of humor, bad smell or disgusting manner of dress. And that is why every encounter with the outside world, a world that cannot be controlled, causes a burning desire to kick someone in the face.
2. We don't have enough friends
We do not choose a place of birth. And each of us from early childhood lives in a city full of people whom we cannot stand. And we go to school with classmates whom we did not choose and who do not share our interests and hobbies. Someone is even beaten ...
But we grow up and find ourselves a circle of friends with the same interests on specialized sites and forums, or we organize our own club of fans of the game "Tanks", where only the most devoted are accepted, and we shut ourselves off from the rest of the world, which does not understand us. You can say goodbye to the tedious, awkward and painful process of interacting with people who are not like you.
But the problem is that peaceful relationships with people who are incompatible with you are decisive for life in society. Even more: relationships with people whom you cannot stand, and there is society - all these people with opposite tastes and conflicting characters who coexist in the same space and interact, very often clenching their teeth.
Some 50 years ago, all the neighbors gathered in a small, overcrowded, stuffy room of one of the lucky ones to watch TV - a new miracle of technology. There was no particular choice: either endure it, or you won't see the TV. And when someone bought a car, the whole house, or even the block, gathered around to look at it. And many of them are still assholes!
But in general, then people were happier at their jobs and more satisfied with their lives. More importantly, they had more friends. Even despite the fact that it was often not possible to filter peers by interests, and often even those who just lived in the neighborhood were called friends, they had more close friends than we can boast of today. These were people who could be trusted.
Undoubtedly, after we manage to overcome this first feeling of irritation, after this feeling of superiority called "they listen to other music and will not understand mine" subsides, there comes a feeling of the need for other people and the desire to be needed by others at a level above common interests. ... And the ability to tolerate fools and endure irritation is literally the only thing that allows us to function in a world inhabited by other people. Otherwise, you turn into emo. And this is already a scientifically proven fact ...
3. SMS is not the best way to communicate
It doesn't even take any research to understand that more than 40 percent of what is said in an SMS or email is misunderstood. The printed text does not convey intonation, emotions or other non-verbal color of the message. Because of this, a lot of difficulties, grievances and misunderstandings arise.
How many friends do you only chat with online? If 40 percent of your personality is lost in text communication, do these people really know you? Do people dislike you through text messages, emails, forums or chat rooms because you are truly incompatible? Or is it because of those 40 percent misunderstood? And those who like you?
Many are trying to make up for the difference in numbers by recruiting hundreds of friends on Odnoklassniki and VKontakte. But the problem is ...
4. Virtual friends only add loneliness
Continuing the previous conversation, it should be noted that when communicating with a person in person, only 7 percent of the meaning of everything said is conveyed directly by words. The remaining 93 percent of the meaning is hidden in non-verbal forms, including gestures, facial expressions, body language, tone, intonation, etc. Indeed, in most cases, our humor is just sarcasm, but sarcasm can only be noticed by intonation. It is not visible in the written text.
This is the main problem. The human ability to absorb the mood of others through this kind of subconscious osmosis is crucial. Children born without her are considered mentally retarded. People with a surplus of it are called "charismatic" and they become movie stars or politicians. It's not about what they say. The point is the energy that they radiate, and which instills in us a good sense of ourselves.
Living in the Text World, this is all exposed. And this has a side effect: in the absence of a sense of the mood of the interlocutor, every line we read passes through the filter of our own mood. Being annoyed, any text is perceived with sarcasm and negativity, with a thirst to be offended. To make matters worse, by continuing to communicate in the same spirit, your mood will not change. After all, people say something unpleasant all the time. Of course, despondency comes. You are entering a fight with the whole world! And at these moments we really need someone who will take by the shoulders and shake well. And this leads to the next point ...
5. We lack criticism
The worst thing about not having close friends is not missed birthdays or a sad wall tennis game. No! The worst part is the lack of real, healthy criticism.
On the Internet, absolutely strangers on forums and chats can call you "mean troll", "vile windbag", "pathetic fagot", "boring", or "upstart". But all this is completely unimportant and all these name-calling and insults should not be confused with criticism, because none of these strangers know you well enough to get to the point. Offending is someone who wants to emphasize their hatred for you. Criticize those who want to help, pointing out what is most convenient for you not to know.
It is sad that there are many people who have never had conversations like this. Outside interference, the harsh truth, these awful, awkward, twisted uncomfortable conversations, possible only with those who see right through you, are sometimes terribly necessary.
Email and text messages are the perfect way to avoid such openness. You can reply to a printed message whenever it is convenient. You can weigh all the words, choose the question that is most convenient to answer. The interlocutor will not see your face, your condition, your excitement and irritation, he will not be able to convict you of a lie. Everything is completely under your control. And the interlocutor will never penetrate your armor, will not see you in the worst light, will not recognize the embarrassment that you cannot control. Gone are the days of the usual evasions, antics, humiliation and vulnerability on which true friendship is built.
Walk through VKontakte accounts, look at the images that people create for themselves. Having made dozens of friends in a blog or forum, introducing yourself as the Lord of the Night, it will be quite difficult to tell someone about an acute attack of diarrhea right in the middle of a New Year's corporate party. You will never be able to be yourself, and this is the feeling of extreme loneliness.
6. We are victims of feelings of resentment and anger
Many will argue that there are a lot of reasons for depression: people are dying of hunger, countries are turning into Nazi Germany, elderly parents watch stupid television shows and endlessly discuss them, people are dying in senseless wars ...
But where did much more negativity come from in us than there was in our parents or grandparents? Previously, people did not live that long, and babies died much more often. Dread diseases were more common. In the old days, the only means of communication with a friend who moved to another city was a pen, a piece of paper, and a postage stamp. Now there is Iraq, but our parents had Afghanistan, which claimed 50 times more lives, and their parents had the Second World War, which took a thousand times more. Most of our parents grew up in a time without air conditioning, and our grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not have them at all.
Physically, we live much better today, no matter how we measure it ... but, you will not understand this if you read the news on the net. Why?
Let's look at it from this perspective: if some music site publishes an article under the heading "The Lyapis Trubetskoy group makes good music", and on the same day, on the same site, another article appears under the title "Music critics called the group "Lyapis Trubetskoy" the worst group of all times and peoples ", which one, in your opinion, will be more popular? Of course, the second one! Resentment breeds word of mouth.
News blogging people know this very well. Every site is fighting for traffic. Even without hosting ads, they still measure their success in terms of the size of their audience. Therefore, they carefully select only the stories that incite the greatest interest and resentment. Other blogs start retyping the same story and twisting from their point of view. You can wallow all day in this warm, stagnant swamp of indignation and never get out of it.
Only in such an environment could the stupid conspiracy theories of September 9, 2001, according to which Bush himself blew up the twin towers, and the planes were just a hologram, could appear. Having heard such conversations, every opposition leader becomes Hitler, and every election becomes an apocalypse. And this is only because you keep reading all this.
This was not a big problem before. We all remember the times when there were only three channels on TV, two of which were broadcast only since lunchtime. Absolutely all people were united by news releases that presented information from only one point of view. Some points of view were belated and twisted. Some news was generally hushed up. But everyone heard the same thing.
There are no more effective "media". Previously, the same news was simply perceived differently by different people. Today, the same news is presented in different ways. It is difficult even to disagree with something, since all the facts are contradictory. A constant feeling of disharmony with the outside world leads to growing tension.
People have always had natural ways to calm their anxiety, but today ...
7. We feel unnecessary, worthless, because we really are worthless.
There is one plus in the fact that friends are only online, but no one talks about it.
They demand less of you ...
Emotionally, you will always support them, calm them down after breaking up another relationship, maybe even dissuade them from attempting suicide. But friendship with someone in the real world adds an endless list of annoying demands: spend an entire evening fixing their computer, go to the funeral of their loved ones, drive them back and forth while their car is in the workshop, meet them on the doorstep of the apartment, just then, when you just sat down to watch your favorite TV series, feed a sandwich with the last piece of sausage in the fridge, hearing that they hadn't eaten anything all day ... But how much easier things are on VKontakte, in ICQ and on the forums ...
The problem is that the need to do something for people sits in us on a subconscious level. For the last 5 thousand years, everyone understood this, and over the last few decades, they suddenly forgot about it. We raise suicidal teens and we strive to teach them self-esteem. But, unfortunately, self-respect and the ability to love oneself appear only after appropriate actions.
Want to break out of this black hole of self-loathing? Get greasy hair off your face, get up from the computer, and buy a cute present for someone you hate. Send a postcard to your worst enemy. Prepare dinner for your parents. Do something simple, but with a really noticeable result: finally clean out the drain or plant a flower.
You are a social animal that releases hormones of happiness when you see the physical benefits of your actions. A form of stress relief through a little discomfort has always been a part of our daily life: hunting a gazelle, picking berries, climbing a mountain, fighting a bear ... But no more. This is why office work makes us unhappy.
We don't get physical, tangible results from work. But after two months spent at a construction site under the burning sun, until the end of your days you will repeat: "I built this", driving past a house. Maybe that's why mass shootings happen more often in offices than on construction sites.
The physical satisfaction of getting dirty under your nails can only come when you turn off your computer, go outside, and reconnect with the real world. The feeling that you get every time you say “I built it” or “I raised it” or “I fed him” or “I made these pants” cannot be compared to anything the Internet has to offer you!
