In Yesterday's article I was talking about the success and failure of relationships, and tonight I thought I would look at some aspects around the other side of the coin, choosing to stay alone, and some of the changes in culture and where it might lead, based on my own observations.
More and more people are not only staying unmarried for longer, but are avoiding committed relationships altogether. There are many reasons for this, but all the reasons in the world an individual might give, tends to come down to their own past conditioning. For instance, there was social conditioning for women to enter into the workforce and chase careers, but many who did so feel guilty about the time they didn't spend with their children, or sad they chose not to have children at all. When they were young, it all made sense and the decision was intentional based on what they believed at the time. But they didn't predict, how they'd feel later.
That conversation opens up a can of worms for many.
But it shouldn't.
People use extremes to justify averages, but just like I was writing about the obesity epidemic, averages are averages because the majority of people fit the mould. And when it comes to the way we behave, on average we are pretty predictable. Not every overweight person is unhealthy, but the majority are. Not every single person is lonely, but the majority are.
Or will be.
The reason is that regardless of the social conditioning and advancements in technology over the last decades, we haven't evolved as a species to live our lives disconnected, isolated, and without intimacy. This means that even though we have created some substitutes, they are poor matches for healthy relationships and will never fill the void for the average person. Leaving the average person, in personal conflict.
However we look at it, our decisions now are going to have an effect on our future, and while we might be able to predict some aspects of what will happen, we are terrible at predicting how we are going to feel in the future, in circumstances that we don't understand now.
For instance, the neighbours were talking about their mid-teen son and his friends who essentially have already made the decisions on the future, about not working and just doing whatever to get by. An older cousin who is out of school and working, has adopted the "own nothing and be happy" mindset that has been conditioned over the last couple decades and spends everything he gets, without any consideration of what it means in his future. The young refuse to take responsibility.
Which means they are acting irresponsibly.
Yes, life has changed, culture has changed, but our physiological, mental, and emotional structure is much the same as it has been for thousands of years. We have evolved to not only be creative, but also be owners of what we create, and live in some form of community with social connections. And, we have evolved to desire intimacy.
Tinder one nights stands aren't a substitute for intimacy.
Sex is great, but it isn't enough to sustain the average person's needs for social connection. And in my experience, whilst sex is very important for the average romantic relationship, a lot of sex with veritable strangers leads to emptiness and loneliness. And that is when young. What happens when people who live that life in their twenties and thirties, continue to try and live that life into their fifties and sixties.
Is it sustainably rewarding?
I believe that society is suffering from a scarcity of quality human interaction and intimacy. We have created a distraction filled technological desert, devoid of intimacy, and we have been convinced that we don't need it. You know, relationships are hard and getting into them is likely to lead to breakups anyway, and they hurt.
And simultaneously, we have been conditioned to be hyper-sensitive to discomfort of multiple kinds - especially emotional discomfort. Yet ironically perhaps, we have also been conditioned to react to any discomfort with uncontrolled emotions.
Is it any wonder people struggle in relationships?
So we don't take ownership, we are uncommitted, we are easily triggered, and we are constantly seeking distraction so that we don't have to face discomforts of any kind.
But we are still human.
And the problem is that so much "humanness" has been taken out of daily life, that we don't recognise what is actually missing. So, we consume more content, buy more gadgets, swipe more meaningless transactions, trying to overcome the gap between what our whole human needs, and what our shallow self has been trained to want.
The growing dysfunction in society is due to our shift in focus away from growth of communities, into isolation of individuals. From young ages, we are isolated behind screens, taught to be individualistic and protected in engineered environments from reality. We are wrapped in proverbial physical, mental and emotional cottonwool, so that once we leave the confines of what we know, variation in experience triggers our pain receptors, we feel discomfort, and we react emotionally.
It is the behaviour of childish tantrums and tyrannical leaders who are fragile due their personal insecurities. It is the behaviour of people who are inexperienced, and of those unwilling to take responsibility for their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
But when this is the condition of the average person, we are going to see increasing interpersonal conflict, that has a knock-on effect that influences everything from the ground up. At some point though, it is likely that all the distractions in the world are not enough to hold that creeping feeling at bay any longer, and we wake up for a moment to realise, we bought into the wrong cause.
By then though, it might be too late to correct.
Since we are like spoiled children unwilling to mature, perhaps many of us are better off alone. At least then, we can save others from our tyranny.
Taraz
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