What's the biggest problem in our society?

[leavingthesoultrap]

 

[sserafim]

Anything and everything

 

[dandoridunban]

Surprised war isn't on here. Millions of people who Don't want to die die in them for no good reason. Especially any war about religon.

 

[Pluto]

It's quite an epic question. As we've seen with the dubious results of all human economic systems and philosophies, the problem must be something incredibly fundamental.

According to the theologian Neale Donald Walsch who I've referred to here a few times, the problem boils down to the basic human worldview. He repeatedly quotes survival of the fittest and might is right. This theme permeates everything that underly human structures - child-raising, education, religion, economics, media, politics, etc.

The polar opposite is the philosophy of oneness. He cites non-human societies on other planets (yes, this is getting weird) and describes in some detail the radically different ways in which they operate. Incidentally, one notices common ground with earlier nature-oriented societies like Native American culture. The fact that these societies were driven to extinction by European Christians with guns goes to show how difficult it is to overcome human primitiveness and establish a more enlightened species.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

Well the biggest problem with humans is our instincts such as tribalism which compound us to seek echo chambers and overlook any and all sources of cognitive dissonance. This also feeds our collective stubbornness which prevents almost everyone who's ever lived and ever will live from gaining the capacity to change their own minds when necessary. This stubbornness is probably the root of so many of our other modern problems today that were listed in this poll because it was also the root of many of the problems in the past as well. I don't believe humanity can ever overcome these issues in its current trajectory but who knows. Perhaps our stubborn human spirit will collectively force us to find a way to overcome or maybe it will just keep things downwardly spiraling as they are forever.

 

[Little_Suzy]

It's men! Territorial but noncommittal at the same time.

Men with schizoid personality disorder who are high-functioning and successful make wonderful partners for women who are not emotionally needy and prefer to be dog moms.

I adore all men, but I support vasectomy for all men!

 

[Tesha]

Religion

 

[leavingthesoultrap]

It's men! Territorial but noncommittal at the same time.

Men with schizoid personality disorder who are high-functioning and successful make wonderful partners for women who are not emotionally needy and prefer to be dog moms.

I adore all men, but I support vasectomy for all men!

This made me laugh
I myself am done with men. I would rather direct the energy and time towards something useful or pleasant.

 

[falling_snow]

I think that selfishness is the source of a lot of problems. If people thought more about others and their point of views, many of the options wouldn't even be there.

 

[derpyderpins]

Voted "other." Focusing on modern western culture.

If I had to say one thing, it's a lack of (good) purpose. At all levels. Of course, I could be biasing this off of my own experience, but I think this is ultimately true.

The "god-shaped hole" in your heart is a real thing. I'm not advocating for religion. I can't bring myself to believe. But humans need something to believe in. It gets them up and makes them do more than simply keeping themselves alive. So, what do we fill that hole with?

God was an easy one: 'this life is just a temporary tryout for eternity of either awesomeness in heaven or shit in hell beyond your comprehension'. If I can believe in that, I'm sure as shit going to do my best every day and try to look good for God. Problem here is as we access to more and more information about the world it becomes way harder to actually believe, and people don't.​

​

Working for a better life for ourselves and family. I think about post-WWII, and the "leave it to beaver" era of america, and I imagine that after the war and great depression it felt pretty damn satisfying to think that I could have a job, a wife, two kids, a house, and put food on the table. Since then, though . . . that doesn't feel like nearly enough. We all have supercomputers in our pockets. A complete dumbass can be 100x more productive than someone in the 1950's just thanks to technology they had no part in developing. Everything feels cut-and-paste. Nothing is organic... just doing what my grandparents considered to be pretty good is not worth a damn.​

​

So, you aspire for more. You pursue something that feels inventive or creative, like an art or running your own business. After all, we now have social media and youtube showing us people who seem to be living the "influencer life," or they are making money from their art or music . . . boy, THAT would surely fill the God-shaped hole! Two issues: (1) it probably won't, but more importantly (2) there are 8 billion people on the planet, you're probably competing with a billion, and only about 10k spots available for what you're dreaming of. You're almost certainly not going to get that pipe-dream anyway. So . . . no purpose, just depression.​

​

A lot of people will point towards family as an alternative. MY kids will be special because they will be MINE from my super special DNA, therefore I'll get an animalistic satisfaction from raising them, right? I haven't experienced that, so I can't speak to it from personal experience, but in a world where realistically both parents - if they stick together - will have to work some to afford life, you're hardly going to do any of the actual "raising." I don't think this works as well as people claim it does. It also makes your life so very one-dimensional.​

​

Other people get driven just to make money. They're going to succeed by climbing the corporate ladder. They work 60-80 hour weeks. They post on linked-in. They have no depth to their life. This is a purpose, but it's certainly not good, and there is no room in their life to make the world around them better.​

This lack of purpose, or crappy purpose, means that in our precious free moments we fill it with distractions: whatever can keep our brain occupied as it tries to scream at us that it needs a purpose and we are starving it. Instead we watch shows or click on websites or scroll through social media and make the problem worse. Often we attach ourselves to "teams": sports teams, political teams, fictional groups in media, or taking silly sides on topics on the internet. These are all things where we have little to no control over the outcome, yet we will let our emotional reaction ride on said outcome. No purpose. No agency. It leads to being unbalanced, unmotivated, uninformed.

It means people have little impact, positive or negative, either globally or locally, and it makes people far more susceptible to being taken advantage of by scam artists. It leads to a society stuck in a ditch with no ability to dig itself out. We have a populace that avoids conflict, pain, or anything negative, because there is no positive purpose to live for, so our instinct is to therefore cut out as much negative as possible. Have you ever felt the need to stand up for a principle that didn't have much practical consequence, but you felt strongly about doing the "right thing," so you made a stand, and then you got no support - maybe even annoyance from the people around you? This is what leads to that. I imagine a lot of people here understand that, because it adds up over a lifetime. When you realize you can't make a big impact on the world alone, but no matter how much you scream at people you can't drag them away from their sportsball or netflix or political news source of choice, you start giving up. Then, nothing changes. Nothing gets better.

People say it's a society of sheep and wolves, but when you think about it it's more like vultures and a corpse.

 

[sserafim]

Voted "other." Focusing on modern western culture.

If I had to say one thing, it's a lack of (good) purpose. At all levels. Of course, I could be biasing this off of my own experience, but I think this is ultimately true.

The "god-shaped hole" in your heart is a real thing. I'm not advocating for religion. I can't bring myself to believe. But humans need something to believe in. It gets them up and makes them do more than simply keeping themselves alive. So, what do we fill that hole with?

God was an easy one: 'this life is just a temporary tryout for eternity of either awesomeness in heaven or shit in hell beyond your comprehension'. If I can believe in that, I'm sure as shit going to do my best every day and try to look good for God. Problem here is as we access to more and more information about the world it becomes way harder to actually believe, and people don't.

Working for a better life for ourselves and family. I think about post-WWII, and the "leave it to beaver" era of america, and I imagine that after the war and great depression it felt pretty damn satisfying to think that I could have a job, a wife, two kids, a house, and put food on the table. Since then, though . . . that doesn't feel like nearly enough. We all have supercomputers in our pockets. A complete dumbass can be 100x more productive than someone in the 1950's just thanks to technology they had no part in developing. Everything feels cut-and-paste. Nothing is organic... just doing what my grandparents considered to be pretty good is not worth a damn.

So, you aspire for more. You pursue something that feels inventive or creative, like an art or running your own business. After all, we now have social media and youtube showing us people who seem to be living the "influencer life," or they are making money from their art or music . . . boy, THAT would surely fill the God-shaped hole! Two issues: (1) it probably won't, but more importantly (2) there are 8 billion people on the planet, you're probably competing with a billion, and only about 10k spots available for what you're dreaming of. You're almost certainly not going to get that pipe-dream anyway. So . . . no purpose, just depression.

A lot of people will point towards family as an alternative. MY kids will be special because they will be MINE from my super special DNA, therefore I'll get an animalistic satisfaction from raising them, right? I haven't experienced that, so I can't speak to it from personal experience, but in a world where realistically both parents - if they stick together - will have to work some to afford life, you're hardly going to do any of the actual "raising." I don't think this works as well as people claim it does. It also makes your life so very one-dimensional.

Other people get driven just to make money. They're going to succeed by climbing the corporate ladder. They work 60-80 hour weeks. They post on linked-in. They have no depth to their life. This is a purpose, but it's certainly not good, and there is no room in their life to make the world around them better.​

This lack of purpose, or crappy purpose, means that in our precious free moments we fill it with distractions: whatever can keep our brain occupied as it tries to scream at us that it needs a purpose and we are starving it. Instead we watch shows or click on websites or scroll through social media and make the problem worse. Often we attach ourselves to "teams": sports teams, political teams, fictional groups in media, or taking silly sides on topics on the internet. These are all things where we have little to no control over the outcome, yet we will let our emotional reaction ride on said outcome. No purpose. No agency. It leads to being unbalanced, unmotivated, uninformed.

It means people have little impact, positive or negative, either globally or locally, and it makes people far more susceptible to being taken advantage of by scam artists. It leads to a society stuck in a ditch with no ability to dig itself out. We have a populace that avoids conflict, pain, or anything negative, because there is no positive purpose to live for, so our instinct is to therefore cut out as much negative as possible. Have you ever felt the need to stand up for a principle that didn't have much practical consequence, but you felt strongly about doing the "right thing," so you made a stand, and then you got no support - maybe even annoyance from the people around you? This is what leads to that. I imagine a lot of people here understand that, because it adds up over a lifetime. When you realize you can't make a big impact on the world alone, but no matter how much you scream at people you can't drag them away from their sportsball or netflix or political news source of choice, you start giving up. Then, nothing changes. Nothing gets better.

People say it's a society of sheep and wolves, but when you think about it it's more like vultures and a corpse.

Why do people attach themselves to teams?

 

[indignity]

Money.

 

[Homo erectus]

Hopelessness.

 

[sserafim]

Hopelessness.

Society itself is the problem

 

[indignity]

Society itself is the problem

the problem is not with people but the things they do. intention = action = result. the rest are consequences

 

[Homo erectus]

Society itself is the problem

Money.

Yes, it's the economic nature of modern societies. The creation of money is not open nor transparent. It is easy to segregate people by giving some people a lot or very little money in different ways. With the coming of electronic payment, they have another tool. Even when people appear to have money, the authorities can still control what people can buy and go. That goes back to option 1: inequality.

 

[derpyderpins]

Why do people attach themselves to teams?

My speculation is that it's a combination of

1. Distraction from reality. It's a lifetime of dopamine hits when the "team" wins after all.
2. Removing agency: I don't have to do crap if I blame everything on the wrong politics team/ I get to be super happy when my football team wins even though I didn't actually do anything.
3. Filling a void. Call it the God-shaped hole, or substituting a fictitious cause/community for something real like helping your neighbors at a local charity. I feel unfulfilled so I wake up every day dreaming of that sweet Super Bowl or Election win or whatever.

Not to shit on them. It's like any addiction. I've spent a lot of my life latched onto teams. One day I was already stressed about my career and my team lost and I said "I can't afford to be pissed about this. I had no control over it." I still like politics and football casually but I'm glad I don't obsess anymore.

 

[DarkRange55]

World wide or in the US?

 

[RemainingDubious]

Pride.

 

[Meteora]

Egoism/human Egos.

 

[dandoridunban]

Religion

No, Religion can be done well and peacefully and coexist with other religions, but not a single innocent and non-suicidal person should die over it. Unfortunately, people die over religion alot.

 

[deathslament]

I don't know because i don't care about it, i just want to die but im trying to get hands on a method peaceful enough. its not working so far

Religion

Absolute truth.

 

[juna]

Voted other. The problem is societal expectations. Overburdening people with expectations of what is expected out of them. Let people be what they want and do what they want. Not everyone needs to do a degree, not everyone needs to marry, not everyone wants kids.
Not everyone wants to go to a religious place...

 

[deathslament]

Voted other. The problem is societal expectations. Overburdening people with expectations of what is expected out of them. Let people be what they want and do what they want. Not everyone needs to do a degree, not everyone needs to marry, not everyone wants kids.
Not everyone wants to go to a religious place...

i only wanted to do one thing in this word. but im too poor to do much. it'