Photo by Teslariu Mihai
Lately, I have noticed a lack of life in my surroundings. At seventeen, I watch as we get closer and closer to becoming soulless. We have become a depressed hopeless generation that finds any possibility of escapism appealing. The news vomits numbers of deaths, suicides, school shootings … and as those numbers come closer to home, we consume, to cope. We become indifferent and tired. Hopeless. Depressed. A feeling of urgency rose in me. Am I to be next? How did we get to this point? I picked up the philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s work The Burnout Society (2015), a thoughtful analysis of how we have become slaves to self-efficacy. It powerfully altered what I’d thought about depression. Han explores the effects of capitalism on mental health and how this society is not only depressed but burnt out.
He explains how the main issue is not excess negativity but excess positivity. The idea that “all is possible if we work hard enough” is unrealistic, as effort is relative. This excess positivity blurs the line between the oppressor and the oppressed. After the events of the Cold War, with an overflow of capitalistic propaganda, humans adopted a false sense of freedom in which we believe all are capable and all are free. During the industrialization period, there was a clear structure, of those who demanded and those who delivered the service. The worker would go home and would be free from the oppressor. Now, it is no longer industry that demands from the worker, but workers demand from themselves. As we believe in this excessively positive narrative, we work and work, slaves to the idea that we soon will be rewarded. We go home and we still work. We work, and we tire ourselves. The worker gets to a point of hyperactivity that eventually becomes hyper passive. The worker reaches a point of burnout. Burnout is defined by the dictionary as a “physical, mental and emotional exhaustion caused by excessive prolonged stress.” The American Osteopathic Association defines it as “Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion. Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job. Reduced professional efficacy”. The semantic field of industry, work, ‘job’, ‘professional’ places the risks of burnout in industry rather than in the individual. It simplifies the root of the problem, focusing on the business and not the system that shapes it. Burnout is not energy depletion but excess energy. You think so much you cannot choose what to think about. Technology, however, offers a simple solution to this: we simply mustn’t think anymore. This generation has grabbed it. We don’t wish to think anymore, so we have found other ways to occupy our brains and silence our thoughts.
Social media has been around for as long as I can remember (which is not long), yet only in my teenage years has it become such a major part of my life. I watched videos of individuals in big houses, living perfect lives with the perfect morning routine, one I was “sure” they keep up with in their worst days. I watched and I dreaded the idea of not being them, of not having their lives. How come? I decided to work hard ‘I must study, educate myself and that way I will attain that perfect life’. How many thought the same as me? How many hoped to delight in the privileges capitalism can give us? We dream, we work, and we tire ourselves. Our escapism has turned into the main mode of propaganda, in which we are not even aware of what is being fed to us, which only aggravates our stress. We consume an endless amount of content that leads us nowhere, other than to blame ourselves for not being, doing or achieving what we are watching. This further adds to the self-oppression as, now, the escape we had from the oppressor (our minds) is simply a reminder of what we should do, what we should look like, and how we should be living. Failure is not seen as a result of external factors, but a result of our own incompetence. No one is stopping you, so why are you still here? Why are you in the same place?
We have come to a point of hyperactivity that blocks our ability to process things, and we no longer care about what is happening around us. I speak to classmates and friends as we joke and laugh at our “phone addictions” or how horrible things are everywhere all the time, and while we are all subconsciously aware of the gravity of things we speak of, we do not know what can be done. Before we are able to process, we are thrown more information, more atrocities. All we can do is sit and laugh. We are hopeless. I received news of another suicide attempt of a thirteen-year-old. Shocking, terrible news that spread through the halls in heavy grey steps, yet a sense of normality lingered. We were aware of this, of the level of suffering people must be in to end their lives, yet no one was shocked. This was treated as banal, as just another one.
Childhood is believed to be the most important period in life due to brain development, as 90% of a child’s brain development happens before the age of five (Harvard University). This is no big news. We have been aware of how important early life is, as several branches of psychology explore how events at a young age shape us for the rest of our lives. Moreover, studies show that excessive screentime in adults from 18-25 will lead to a thinning of the cerebral cortex. We are aware, as we have proof, that not only social media but screens can affect adult brains, yet we give electronic devices to three-year-olds? When speaking to one of my teachers about my ideas on how we should make social media illegal for minors she replied as if I was insane, “We’ll see what you think when you are older and have kids of your own”. My teacher meant that when I become a parent, I will be too tired to care, and just as we have been doing, will make use of anything that allows me to rest. This means that childhood has lost its meaning. The recent epidemic of “Sephora Kids” as we called them, was a clear sign of such. Children, nine-year-olds with highly complex daily makeup routines raided makeup stores, as they tried to fit in the narrative they saw online. Children learn through observation. They watch and they imitate, but they no longer imagine. Several workers from these stores, horrified at the parental indifference, shared their experience. Parents, too exhausted to care what their children asked for, bought products with potential to damage their skin in the long run. I blame not the parents as they, too, are a result of excess positivity, of hyperactivity, of the utter burnout of capitalism.
While ideas of opportunity and freedom are tightly linked to capitalism, the reality is quite the opposite. One can argue that studying one’s whole life, entering a good university and becoming a professional is a great effort and it makes sense that those who are educated and professionalized should earn more than those who clean, right? One can argue it is all about opportunity, some will have it and some won’t. But opportunity is generated through money and money through opportunity. All jobs are crucial for the functioning of a society, but capitalism will always favour those who invest more. The more you pay for college the more deserving of money you will be. We are conditioned to believe that everyone has the opportunity if they really want, and that those living in deplorable conditions simply have not tried. People cannot be educated if they do not have access to the proper resources, to buses, to books. I have listened to people who say that children no longer wish to learn, as we have become too consumed by technology. In small towns in Brazil children use social media to show how government school buses drive past them every morning. They are not unwilling. They are powerless. It is no longer a question of willingness, but how a system can lead us to give up.
We have become slaves to ourselves, exhausting ourselves to reach unrealistic goals. The idea of freedom is impossible in a world in which we are not fed the complete story. Growing up, I listened to older generations complaining about us. At seven, I was called lazy, and at thirteen, I felt tired. Now, at seventeen, I still do. However, I do not blame myself. I do not blame my parents. I blame the system.
The post The Braindead Generation appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Camila Cunha Quelis.