The Modern Struggle
What is The Modern Struggle?
Most of us are unhappy and dissatisfied with our lives in a world now where it has been the easiest, safest, most advanced time to live. Why? The life we want to live has never been more possible than now. Why are we struggling? Why are we unhappy? What IS in the way?
We are fighting addiction, weaponised addiction used to control the masses and be played around like puppets. Now that last sentence makes me sound like a doomsday guy. But trust me, I’m not lying. I’m not telling you to go hide in a bunker and put tinfoil over your head (although that would be pretty funny).
I encourage you to take a moment and look at the world and think about what humans are doing now. We are chasing pleasure for its own sake, with no purpose and no goal. Chasing and chasing and chasing. Pursuing pleasure for its own sake lands us into addiction very easily and then becomes very difficult to get out of. Spiralling down into a rabbit hole with no out.
We have become a society that needs an instant, high amount of gratification. We can’t live without it. Everything is available on demand, 24 hours, 7 days a week.
We live in an age of abundance, which is very useful, and very dangerous. We have become so connected with our pleasures and so disconnected from what really matters.
Our tribes.
Our religions.
Our cultural networks.
Our friends, families, and communities.
Now more than ever there are so many alone individuals disconnected from all the things I listed above and possibly more. They’re trying to fight all these things that are weaponised, alone.
Alcohol, drugs, pornography, mainstream media, dating apps, fast food, processed food, sugar, caffeine, social media, video games.
These things are engaging you in fake play and fake work, a fake reality without you even noticing until it’s too late (we as people have a habit of realising things until they are too late to change). And we’re becoming desensitised to quick pleasures.
Look how easy and good life has become.
Before you would put yourself out there and meet strangers who would eventually become your friends. Now all it takes is getting drunk at a bar with a bunch of strangers with the alcohol holding the friendship.
Before you would have to go talk to the person you’re attracted to and ask them out on a date, now you just hide under the blankets and watch a lot of porn.
Before you would have to grow your own food/shop for organic food and cook a nutritious meal. Now you just buy and eat all the processed food you want.
Once you become desensitised to these things, you’ll want them in stronger doses, and that’s where the rabbit hole begins. Pursuing more and more pleasure for its own sake is a form of drug in itself.
“If we seek pleasure for only the sake of pleasure, you may have instant gratification, but you will never get sustained pleasure.” - Blue Gold Academy https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/month-focus-21-rules-life-rule-2-do-seek-pleasure-its-gold-academy/
Improve your self-awareness, take control of your urges, don’t let these things dictate your life. You dictate your life, not these addictions.
Until next time,
Brody
PS
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1302676-accept-everything-just-the-way-it-is-do-not-seek