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Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

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Re: Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

#31

Post by scottlocklin »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #20
scottlocklin wrote: post #15

Yeah, no. While it's true that modern upper middle class anglosphere urbanites torture themselves with completely optional neurotic bullshit, most of the rest of the world is pretty relaxed and may even experience a higher standard of living.

I have family members who benefit from my financial support thanks to my being a tortured neurotic modern urbanite. I won't get any of the "big bucks" in the US if I unplug or relax too much, now will I?

If you think checking in on your phone 200 times a day and worrying about everything your ipotato tells you to worry about is helping feed your family: whatever works for you, pal. That sort of mentality never worked for me.

Re: Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

#32

Post by AdmiralGinge »

arethuza wrote: post #17
WalterBright wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last century, people were all worried about nuclear armageddon. This was not an idle fear, see the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, of course, there were all the global wars. I find it strange that people think this century is uniquely stressful. My theory, unencumbered by evidence, is parents have successfully removed all chance of failure, injury, risk and need for effort from children, and so children never learn…

"I find it strange that people think this century is uniquely stressful." Probably because people talk about it far more than they used to - which is a good thing. However, I also suspect social media also layers on a whole news ways for people to get stressed.

I find the sort of 18-25 internet culture that exists on other platforms is full of "look at how depressed I am lol just kidding" kinds of posts. It's like an amplifier for dragging people down, and this year social media in general has effectively given every rabid doomer a megaphone to spout (mostly unsourced) doom and gloom like a million funeral bells ringing constantly in your face. No wonder rates of depression are up!

Re: Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

#33

Post by WJW »

kiba wrote: post #29
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually in psychology there is exactly that distiction between two types of stress: Eustress and Distress. The first, eustress is what you could call 'positive' stress, stress that you can cope with and that induces change, growth, and learned experience. The second, Distress is stress that is too much for you to cope with either in type or intensity, it's the type of stress that would likely trigger a physical flig…

Exercise just doesn't register as stress to me, although you could call it stress. For me, stress is about negative outcomes.

It's fine to have personal definitions, but if something is regularly called "stress" in medical literature then it's not strange that people will use that definition in online discussions as well. :)

Re: Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

#34

Post by thanatos519 »

WalterBright wrote: post #13
madaxe_again wrote: post #11

Existential dread is like the background radiation of stress for this era - the constant worry that the climate will change more rapidly than anticipated, that reified systems will collapse, that unrest and chaos will spread. Add to that the expectation of constant availability and instantaneous response, the expectation of unmitigated success, the expectation of having a soaring career and being a good parent and im…

In the last century, people were all worried about nuclear armageddon. This was not an idle fear, see the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, of course, there were all the global wars. I find it strange that people think this century is uniquely stressful. My theory, unencumbered by evidence, is parents have successfully removed all chance of failure, injury, risk and need for effort from children, and so children never learn…

I grew up under the threat of nuclear armageddon, which was a super-scary binary willtheydropthebombornot one day end of the world. The difference for me is that catastrophic system collapse due to carbon-emission-driven global heating is in progress, unstoppable, and something that will happen over a much longer period of time.

(Apparently the threat of nuclear armageddon is as high as it has ever been, too: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/ )

Re: Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

#35

Post by gadders »

I would have thought that stress levels would be worse in the - say - 18th Century - widespread disease risk, no pain relief for surgery, realistic prospect of starvation, wars etc etc. Or perhaps people had a more fatalistic attitude?

Yes, you have long term stress in the 21st century, but for those of us lucky enough to live in the 1st World, it's not usually existential stress.

Re: Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

#36

Post by tomtompl »

LatteLazy wrote: post #30

We support ever more people not working. That means workers have to work harder for a smaller share. So workers suffer long term stress. So more of them drop out of work and the problem gets worse...

> That means workers have to work harder for a smaller share

what if the "whole" is not const? Does it necessarily mean that the share is smaller? I'm not convinced

Re: Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

#37

Post by robjan »

LatteLazy wrote: post #30

We support ever more people not working. That means workers have to work harder for a smaller share. So workers suffer long term stress. So more of them drop out of work and the problem gets worse...

We are slowly automating jobs out of existence and increasing efficiency of existing processes. Nothing to do with everyone burning out.

Re: Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

#38

Post by LatteLazy »

robjan wrote: post #37
LatteLazy wrote: post #30

We support ever more people not working. That means workers have to work harder for a smaller share. So workers suffer long term stress. So more of them drop out of work and the problem gets worse...

We are slowly automating jobs out of existence and increasing efficiency of existing processes. Nothing to do with everyone burning out.

You have 3 people working an 8h day. You automate away half that work. So 3 people are now applying for 1.5 jobs. You give one of them the job and he has to work 12h a day. The other two are unemployed. Everyone is stressed, 2 people for lack of money, 1 for exhaustion and fear he'll lose his job to the other two if he doesn't give it 110%.

Kaynes thought we'd keep all three workers for 4h a day and pay them more for the privilege of working part time. But that isn't how markets work. And that's the problem we now face.

Re: Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

#39

Post by etripe »

LatteLazy wrote: post #25
systemvoltage wrote: post #2

I’ve never been satisfied with the definition of stress. My dad always said “If things are going good, that means you’re not trying.” How do you reconcile normal challenges and hardships in life with what is defined as “stress”? In some ways, life without stress is boring and uneventful. At the same time stress is a negative thing that affects your health. It’s not clear to me what is defined as stress - I’ve read nu…

A few lines that help me: Stress is when you're responsible for something you cannot actually control. Anything else might be pressure or life. But if you cannot control it, you can't actually be responsible for it...

As one of the great philosophers of our time, Whitney Cummings, puts it: "let go or be dragged".

Re: Long-term stress is the default mode of the 21st century

#40

Post by dmarchand90 »

thanatos519 wrote: post #34
WalterBright wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last century, people were all worried about nuclear armageddon. This was not an idle fear, see the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, of course, there were all the global wars. I find it strange that people think this century is uniquely stressful. My theory, unencumbered by evidence, is parents have successfully removed all chance of failure, injury, risk and need for effort from children, and so children never learn…

I grew up under the threat of nuclear armageddon, which was a super-scary binary willtheydropthebombornot one day end of the world. The difference for me is that catastrophic system collapse due to carbon-emission-driven global heating is in progress, unstoppable, and something that will happen over a much longer period of time. (Apparently the threat of nuclear armageddon is as high as it has ever been, too: https:/…

The doomsday clock doesn't mean anything anymore, at least for atomic war. They started including global warming as a metric in where they set the clock so it's much closer than where it would be by nuclear risk alone.

For example we're at 100 seconds to midnight, closer than the 2 minutes during the Cuban missile crises, which is total nonsense

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