What's Tony Thinking

Is Life Harder Now? Your Thoughts

This has been fun. Great to have thoughts and insights from so many of you. For those just joining the conversation I kicked it off with some thoughts by Freddie DeBoer last week in my blog titled “Is Life Harder Now?”

DeBoer is a skeptic when it comes to the common lament that life is uniquely or especially hard now. So are many of you, though not all. But let’s get to your comments (several edited for length). Is life harder now? Here’s what you said.

Allan

“Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Shakespeare, “Hamlet”

Bill

To paraphrase one of my favorite verses, “This is the day the Lord has made and I will rejoice and be glad in it.” Every morning it is empowering to know that the creator of the universe has gifted me with a day for which I am grateful, and I haven’t done anything to earn or deserve it. Now it’s up to me, and yes, more choices are much better than too few. An abundance of choices can be less paralyzing when consideration is given to ways of sharing our many choices with others who have so few.

My experience over a thirty year career has been that technology enabled me to do more and to raise the quality of that work while providing me with the opportunity to work from multiple locations. My personal expectations and those of my clients also rose. However, I learned early on that more and better can easily lead to a never enough attitude. I struggled with this facet and found support among family and friends. Even God created a day so He could rest and this brings a powerful message to us. We are not God, there will always be both an internal and external drive to do more, but the life skills of sustaining and creating come with rest and playfulness. When we learn who we are is not what we do, meaning, balance, and grace can enter our lives. (italics added by editor) . . .

I read this piece about life is hard a second time and wanted to share another perspective along with the initially submitted. As an adult, I don’t belief life is harder. I do believe that life is harder for our children and teens than it used to be. By extension, a parent’s life is more difficult during their child rearing years . . . Likely the parents of today’s kids are not able to mediate the culture to their kids as successfully as previous generations due to the pace of change in society and the loss of a generational connectedness. Therefore my answer to the question is life harder today than in previous generations is yes for some groups.

Brad

My answer is a resounding No. Do our fellow citizens fret more? Maybe, but they should snap out of it. Have a bit of appreciation and gratitude for what you’ve got, and, perhaps, buy and read Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now. One review of the book: “My new favorite book of all time.” —Bill Gates.

From the book’s sales pitch on Pinker’s website:

“Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In 75 jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.”(emphasis added by author)

Caroline

A quick thought regarding your blog about is life harder today? In some ways, yes, because our bodies and brains were designed for a different age with different threats. We have few situations in modern life that are truly life-threatening but our neural systems respond to modern stimuli with the same efficiency and strength as when we were greeted by a bear or tiger. Our prefrontal cortexes, as powerful as they are, often cannot compete with these instant and overwhelming threat responses. Also, we are designed to engage, walk, climb, commune and develop in natural surroundings and most of us don’t live very close to nature. Nature calms and regulates our senses and stimuli from modern technology usually does the opposite.

Garth

Well, I’m from Canada, eh, where we never complain even though it snows 11 months of the year!?
But I do think, we in N.America are major whiners. The dangerous side to whining, of course, is when it becomes prejudicial and xenophobic. Always enjoy your musings.

Jim

You pose an interesting question–“Is life harder now, in some way uniquely more difficult?” It depends on what you mean by “harder” and who it is you are asking, harder for me, for whom? I am a 77-yearold white male of European descent. Life is definitely NOT more difficult for me these days. I am enjoying a generous pension plan that is worth as much now as it did when I retired 9 years ago in spite of withdrawing $20, 000 a year. My wife and I are receiving $35,000+ Social Security income per year. I own a townhouse with no mortgage. I am involved in a variety of ministry endeavors that occupies a significant amount of time each week, but I have more free time now than I have ever had. I am free to say yes and no to how I spend my time. I am involved in 4 different Zoom book discussions, 3 of which meet every other week and the other about every 6 weeks. I tutor in our local Learning Lab for new Americans. I work in a Community Garden that contributes 9000+ pounds of produce to a local food bank. I have time to play golf twice a week and walk 3-5 miles per day on other days. Life, for me, is interesting, invigorating, and challenging, and I believe I am contributing to the common good–most days.

Life for me has never been easier in spite of some aging aches and pains. But I certainly realize this is not the case for a growing number of folks struggling with pending and actual homelessness (I work with the Homeless Coalition here in Boise). Nor is this the case for my Indigenous brothers and sisters (I work with a Repair Network in my local congregation). These folks face uphill battles to right the wrongs they have experienced. I can imagine these folks replying affirmatively to your question as well as so many folks around the world struggling with war, racism, hunger, violence, and isms of all kinds. So, it all depends on to whom you are directing your question and what you mean by “harder.” No one’s answer fits all.

Judith

I don’t think that it is harder. I think we think it is harder. When I look back at my folks and grand folks life, I know it isn’t harder now. Their lives were simpler though. The world and its problems are instantly at our finger tips now which allows us tone aware of every hardship everywhere. We also have to adapt much more quickly to changes than they did. Perhaps that is what makes it feel harder.

Kate

Your blog appeared in my inbox just after I had commented to D. that we are unbelievably spoiled, whining about heat and haze and power outages, while most people in the world live and have always lived in circumstances much more hazardous and inescapable than the inconveniences that annoy us. I do think that our modern technologies have made some of us feel especially vulnerable. How to live when the power goes out, the A/C stops, the WIFI evaporates? Dear me!

Well, one recommendation I have is to read a hard copy during daylight of Remembering Peasants by Patrick Joyce — a timely reminder that life has always been hard for most people for most of human history and that while globalized industry and urbanization have brought great improvements in the quality of life for many, they have probably not enhanced individual or communal resilience. On the other hand, it’s dense — not a beach book.

I also think that our exposure to too much information, sometimes invidiously curated by various marketeers, about how the other half supposedly lives has made almost everybody feel insecure. We have been conditioned to consider health and happiness as relative conditions that we might achieve rather than intrinsic ones that we might cultivate.

Rich

Appreciate the thoughts, but life in every generation and for each individual is just “different.” We–growing up–did not deal with cell phones and social media. The suicide rate among teenagers was probably lower. . As you mentioned, life is supposed to be easier. But, it seems to me, rewards are more elusive. When you fixed your own bike, or changed your own oil or grew more of your own food, rewards were palpable. Some have compared shopping to “the hunt.” How lame is that? . . .

On (further) reflection, it pretty much depends on where and how you come into the world. to have come in as a Syrian or Gazan or an Iraqi in the past 25 years would mean that you are in the grips of forces far beyond your control. And that, i always have to remind people goes for Chrstian Arabs and Jews who have lived in Iraq and Gaza for geneations, To have been born on the wrong side of the Rwandan genocide a few years earlier would not have been good,

In short, I think the whole exercise of figuring out “harder” is a luxury of middle class Americans today, the ones born too early or late or lucky enough to have escaped Vietnam, who didn’t volunteer for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. who weren’t part of an illegal entry, etc… I learned in my Turkish village that there are happy people and sad people everywhere, and, historically, i think we can find many times and places that would have been a lark, others not so much.

Rick

Good posts. For my two cents I point to communication technology as a culprit. We all have cell phones and big screen TVs with multiple streaming services.

The breakdown of meaningful groups (Max would call them mediating voluntary associations between the family and the state) has accelerated because of the technology.

I was recently in NYC and my first trip on the subway there since the advent of cellphones. Everybody on the train was immersed in their phone, many had wireless ear buds.

We have constant access to the news, much of it bad. Trump has played on fears of crime and scapegoats the Others.

My life is materially the best it has ever been, but I share anxieties about global warming, the rise of autocracy, the threat to democracy.

I am one of the blessed ones who has both a faith and a faith community in which to ponder life’s complexity, but fewer and fewer people have that and many churches are now agents of fear (on the right) and calls for social change that can create more anxiety (on the left.) I also have a terrific family, which seems to not be the norm these days.

One of George Carlin’s best screeds was about consumer capitalism and how we are reduced to our appetites. “Americans love two things: to shop and to eat. And we do a lot of both, which is why we’re all so fat and have so much shit we don’t need.””

And so, it’s not that life is any harder than before, but that it is less fulfilling, less dignified, less meaningful. Most post-industrial jobs are not meaningful. The family has broken down into individuals who might share a roof but little else. Back to Putnam and Max: the spaces where meaning was found have diminished: the bowling leagues, the Boy Scouts, Rotary, the Grange and 4H, the Masons, to name but a few. In the absence of these we are left to our consuming, Carlin’s shopping and eating. And the new technologies make both easier: think Amazon Prime and DoorDash.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Thanks for giving space for some thoughts.

Susan

I think life is harder, especially for us oldies, trying not to be! Because of so much media access we’re bombarded with directives and news of catastrophe … don’t eat eggs because your cholesterol with soar and you’ll have a heart attack, drink red wine for your heart health…oh no…don’t drink wine, any alcohol with cause dementia. Stay thin, drink water. Scan the whatsit (Bar code?) to get the menu. Huh? All these directives cause me angst because I want to be current., hip, with it. I don’t want to die because I didn’t listen…or read the wrong message…or the message did a 360. I don’t want to look stupid when the only way I can get my food ordered at the restaurant is to scan the whatsit. Politics? Who knows what is real or not. Too much angst!

Loved your article. Could it be that ignorance was bliss? What you don’t know can’t hurt you. Actually the past was full of potholes we just didn’t know about but that didn’t make life easier…it just seemed so.

Wayne

Re-reading Wendell Berry’s 1990 – 2010 book “What Are People For,’ I think Berry emphasis the importance of the necessity of our work. In several of the essays he criticizes the desire for leisure.

 

I think that’s all of you. If I missed anyone, my apologies. Mostly my thanks for joining this conversation. As I said, it’s been fun to hear from you. Maybe we’ll try it again with another provocative question.