Norms are illusions. There is no normal, as the world is simply in constant flux. All the laws we have created for ourselves, the traditions we keep or reject, the way we shape our daily lives, and how we interact with the world and each other, are consequences of the stories we tell ourselves. It is a combination of the technology we invent and use, the values we instill in our children, our understanding of the world in the current era, and simply conformity. When you see the raw, true reality, you can see that everything boils down to two elements: nature, and the human condition. There is a natural world, the greater reality, as only a solipsist would deny this.

I simply believe that anything we find 'normal', including all our behaviours and attitudes, are shaped by the stories we tell ourselves. — Martijn

1 - Competition. — Martijn

How did it come to be like this? Why are we so disconnected as a collective? I believe it's because we are brainwashed into thinking that human life is supposed to be competitive, a faulty assumption from the very start. — Martijn

2 - Desire. Also known as 'hunger', this is also something that has been drilled into us from a young age. We are taught to constantly work so that we can 'achieve' a lot of things. This applies mostly to wealth, status, appearance, reputation, job experience, sexual partners, and fitness. As the ancient philosophers knew: desire is the root of suffering. Any Stoic or Buddhist philosopher (or perhaps all philosophers) realize sooner or later that genuine happiness and stillness can only come from within. It does not matter if you are living in poverty or if you are a literal king or billionaire: happiness can never be external. As Marcus Aurelius famously stated: "Your happiness depends on the quality of your thoughts." — Martijn

What if we instead taught young individuals to be more autonomous and embrace their individuality? What if we stopped constantly shaming each other out of insecurity, and we encouraged each other to be different? — Martijn

Norms are illusions. — Martijn

You can breathe again, and begin to write your own story. Understanding this gave me an immense amount of stillness, mental clarity, and equanimity. I don't know if it was Stoic philosophy that gave me this insight, or if there was some other way I discovered this truth, but regardless: I am free. — Martijn

If I was born millenia ago, I'm sure my life and perspective on the world would be so substantially different that it becomes absurd, due to the substantial differences in our technology, understanding of reality, religious values, and so much more.

Did Buddha behave according to nature any more or less than Hitler did?

Competition. From a young age, we are taught (especially as men) that life is competitive. We compete for homes, partners, jobs, physical space in public transportation or while on the road, and we even compete for time and attention. This is what an advertisement is in the first place: a form of propaganda meant to steal your focus and attention. Social media is especially notorious when it comes to this form of evil...

...When we reflect on the history of the human species, we find that cooperation was the way to go for a long, long time. — Martijn

Desire. Also known as 'hunger', this is also something that has been drilled into us from a young age. — Martijn

There is no greater sin than desire,
No greater curse than discontent,
No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself.
Therefore he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough. — Tao Te Ching Verse 46 - Gia-Fu Feng translation

To expand on the first two points, you can basically boil down almost everything we do in modern society to norms. "It's always been this way." "This is normal"...

...Norms are illusions. There is no normal, as the world is simply in constant flux. All the laws we have created for ourselves, the traditions we keep or reject, the way we shape our daily lives, and how we interact with the world and each other, are consequences of the stories we tell ourselves. — Martijn

To summarize: this entire world we currently live in is primarily built on fear, ego, and greed. These factors affect not just everything we do externally, but especially what happens to us internally. So many people nowadays are mentally unwell, or they live in fear, or suffer from depression, because of the deeply embedded illusions we are falling for. The stories we are telling ourselves and each other right now are deeply sickening and inhuman, — Martijn

It's really only because you were born into that way of seeing things that you are able to raise the questions you have here.

This is an unrealistically romantic view of human nature. It's a good thing to be able to stand back and look a our competitive behaviors and evaluate their usefulness, but to claim that they are somehow unnatural or avoidable is just not true. We had a family of foxes in our back yard a couple of summers ago. The pups were always play fighting and wrestling. I think humans are just as naturally competitive and aggressive as those foxes. Cooperation is also a valuable approach to social living. It's not a question of getting rid of competitiveness, it's a question of balance.

Other civilizations and societies in the past have been just as "inhuman" as ours today is. If you're looking for a return to some state-of-nature, your goal is unrealistic - naive. AsI see it, the changes you are talking about are, always have been, and can only be personal, not political ones. As I noted, the irony is that it is the breakdown of norms that allow us to see the things you have seen.

Depression is a narcissistic malady. It derives from overwrought, pathologically distorted self-reference. The narcissistic-depressive subject has exhausted itself and worn itself down. Without a world to inhabit, it has been abandoned by the Other. Eros and depression are opposites. Eros pulls the subject out of itself, toward the Other. Depression, in contrast, plunges the subject into itself. Today’s narcissistic “achievement-subject” seeks out success above all. Finding success validates the One through the Other. Thereby, the Other is robbed of otherness and degrades into a mirror of the One — a mirror affirming the latter’s image. This logic of recognition ensnares the narcissistic achievement-subject more deeply in the ego. The corollary is success-induced depression: the depressive achievement-subject sinks into, and suffocates in, itself. Eros, in contrast, makes possible experience of the Other’s otherness, which leads the One out of a narcissistic inferno. It sets into motion freely willed self-renunciation, freely willed self-evacuation. A singular process of weakening lays hold of the subject of love — which, however, is accompanied by a feeling of strength. This feeling is not the achievement of the One, but the gift of the Other.

Today, love is being positivized into a formula for enjoyment. Above all, love is supposed to generate pleasant feelings. It no longer represents plot, narration, or drama — only inconsequential emotion and arousal. It is free from the negativity of injury, assault, or crashing. To fall (in love) would already be too negative. Yet it is precisely such negativity that constitutes love: “Love is not a possibility, is not due to our initiative, is without reason; it invades and wounds us.” Achievement society —which is dominated by ability, and where everything is possible and everything occurs as an initiative and a project— has no access to love as something that wounds or incites passion.


- "The Agony of Eros," Byung-Chul Han

Norms are no more illusions than any other aspect of human social life. Yes, they're stories, but all the things we know about the world are stories. Every human idea is a story. Your OP is a story. Humans tell stories. All our mental and social life is made up of stories. Stories are at the heart of human nature.

Is the world we live in "primarily built on fear, ego, and greed?" No, of course not.

What good is politics if it doesn't serve the common man? — Martijn

You write such thoughtful posts; I really enjoy reading them. — Martijn

I envision a system that elects leaders, that discards political parties entirely, and where we vote for ideas and not ideologies, empty dogma, or just the parties themselves. Our democratic system, while good in theory, doesn't actually work, because nobody is taking responsibility and nobody can be held accountable. We point fingers, we change political parties or representatives, but the fundamental issues remain. What good is politics if it doesn't serve the common man? — Martijn

And regarding politics.... Are the current politics working for us? Who is accountable for the mass migration and the issues surrounding them? Who is responsible for the housing crisis, the climate change crisis, and so on? Our politicians? They shift and change every few years, but these problems persist

I'm a bit skeptical of narratives that try to pin all these problems on just the (mis)rule of leaders on one side of the political spectrum. The problems being discussed (difficulty getting good jobs, huge numbers of applicants for each job, over qualified workers, unaffordable housing, low quality services, welfare expenses becoming unaffordable, etc.) are endemic to the West. You see the same sorts of complaints re Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, the US, etc. Yet different sides of the political spectrum have had very varying degrees of long term control across these different states.

Nor is it clear that things are better anywhere else. Housing is increasingly unaffordable in the US, yet it is one of the most affordable rental and ownership markets in the world. It's "hell" in Canada and the UK, yet income to rental/mortgage rates are actually a good deal worse in most of the developing world.

Certainly, Japan and Korea, might shed some light on things. These are wealthy states that haven't experimented with the neo-liberal ideal of the free movement of labor across borders (migration on a fairly unparalleled scale, e.g. to the extent that German children born today will be minorities in Germany before they are middle age) to nearly the same degree. This, and differing cultures, has given them a different blend of problems (e.g. too much work instead of not enough; homes losing value as investments, or even being given away for free, which is a total loss for someone). Yet some of the other problems are very much the same, or even more acute (e.g. the gender-politics gap/war is probably the worst in ROK, scarcity vis-á-vis healthcare services, etc.).

G.K. Chesterton has a great quote here: "The whole modern world has divided itself into Progressives and Conservatives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is making sure they never get fixed." — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's really only because you were born into that way of seeing things that you are able to raise the questions you have here.

Pretty much every issue brought up by the OP has been kicked around since the earliest days of philosophy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The problem the OP identifies stems from a dominant conception of reason and desire in liberalism in particular, which reduces all common goods to individual goods, and man to an atomized, "rational" utility maximizer in terms of such goods. Such a view will tend to make cooperation "just another strategy" within competition. The former is ordered to the latter, instead of vice versa. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The assertion that the issues in the OP have "always been around and recognized" seems to contradict the claim that it is only modernity and liberalism that allow OP to recognize such things, no? — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I see it, the changes you are talking about are, always have been, and can only be personal, not political ones. ...

...At any rate, here is why I think the bolded is wrong.

1. The development of self-determination and self-governance, which allows man to overcome the issues mentioned in the OP, to live a flourishing live, to attain to liberty, and—crucially—to be a good citizen capable of participating in communal self-rule, all require cultivation and education. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Man cannot cultivate and educate himself entirely by himself. We are dependent early in life, and our ability to become more self-determining (e.g. able to provide for our needs, able to transcend the tyranny of immediate desire and gratification, etc.) must be positively fostered and cultivated. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because of 1 and 2, the solutions to the issues in the OP cannot simply be privatized and individualized. Politics is, by definition, the science of the common good. One cannot exclude the cultivation by which man is able to participate in common goods and self-rule from politics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. ↪Martijn, if everything is a story/fiction then there can be no story/fiction / reality/non-fiction dichotomy. For a distinction to have content, "appearance" must differ from "reality." If it's "appearance all the way down," then appearances are reality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is the world we live in "primarily built on fear, ego, and greed?" No, of course not...

...this is obviously a common sentiment, that is, based on polling, becoming more common, particularly in the young. I hardly see how its condescending to dislike the current culture. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't live in an "inhuman system," — T Clark

I think not only you, but I and Martijn and everyone here lives in an inhuman system. — Moliere

It feels like a cheat to me. Looking at my own life, I can see that pretty much all the problems I have are my own responsibility. — T Clark

Capital, which I prefer to feudalism, is still inhuman in the sense that it survives by exploiting other humans -- you see that much, yes? Or no? — Moliere

Since people have exploited others for forever it's not inhuman, but that's inhumane in the sense of humanism or wanting more than this violence. — Moliere

I'm one of the most fortunate people in the history of the world. — T Clark

One of the signs of prosperity and good fortune may be a tendency to grumble about how bad everything is. — Tom Storm

Say we have a privileged, wealthy guy with a "good family" who cares for him. He has lots of opportunities. And he follows the middle to upper class dictum: "get good grades and wrack up accomplishments so you can go to a good college, and do the same there so you can get a good job, and then you can get a good job and do what you want."

He does this. No extraordinary evil befalls him. He has no extraordinary vices. Maybe he drinks or smokes pot a bit too much, or plays too many video games, or has a porn habit, or cannot get a girlfriend, or cannot keep to just one. Maybe not. Nothing out of the ordinary.

And he's miserable. He's prime bait for radical ideologies of one sort of another precisely because he "did everything he was told," and is miserable. This isn't an uncommon phenomena. That's sort of the recruiting mantra of radicals on the right and left, although it certainly helps if people struggle in the labor market or are "overeducated." We could imagine this sort of thing playing out across many gradations. It can even happen to the ultra wealthy (perhaps particularly to the ultra wealthy).

Here is Han's point: in the autoexploitative context of modern liberalism, this man's unhappiness is a personal failure. The self is a project, and it's happiness is a goal that has to be achieved as an accomplishment.

And there are lots of men and women who have encountered this sort of "personal failure." Millions it would seem. So the question is, at what point do we stop thinking this is an aggregate of millions of personal, individual failures and begin to say it is a systematic, social failure or a philosophical failure?

Hmmm. Do I believe this? Probably not.

I think there's some irony, or maybe contradiction, here. To a large extent, cultivation and education are the agents that immerse us in the sea of social expectations.

To quickly define these terms:

Negative Freedom is defined by a subject’s freedom relative to the external world. It is freedom from external barriers that restrict one’s ability to act, e.g., the government or thieves seizing your tools so that you cannot work.

Reflexive Freedom is defined by subject’s freedom relative to themselves. To quote Hegel, “individuals are free if their actions are solely guided by their own intentions.” Thus, “man is a free being [when he] is in a position not to let himself be determined by natural drives.” i.e., when his actions are not subject to contingency. Later philosophers have also noted that authenticity, and thus the free space and guidance needed for us to discover our authentic selves, is another component of reflexive freedom.

Social Freedom is required because reflexive freedom only looks inward; it does not tie individual choices to any objective moral code. This being the case, an individual possessing such freedom may still choose to deprive others of their freedom. (This the contradiction inherent in globalizing Nietzsche’s “revaluation of all values”).

(Note: I have borrowed from and modified Axel Honneth’s work in Freedom’s Right in drawing up this typology)

Since individuals will invariably have conflicting goals, there is no guarantee than anyone will be able to achieve such a self-directed way of life. Negative freedom is also contradictory because “the rational [reflexive] can come on the scene only as a restriction on [negative] freedom.” E.g., being free to become a doctor means being free to choose restrictions on one’s actions because that role entails certain duties.

Social Freedom then is the collective resolution of these contradictions through the creation of social institutions. Ideally, institutions objectify morality in such a way that individuals’ goals align, allowing people to freely choose actions that promote each other’s freedom and wellbeing. Institutions achieve this by shaping the identities of their members, such that they derive their “feeling of selfhood” from, and recognize “[their] own essence” in, membership.

In the language of contemporary economics, we would say that institutions change members’ tastes, shifting their social welfare function such that they increasingly weigh the welfare of others when ranking “social states.” In doing so, institutions help resolve collective action problems, prisoners’ dillemas, etc. They allow citizens to transition into preferencing social welfare over maximal individual advantage.

We are free when we do what it is that we want to do, and we can only be collectively free when we are guided into supporting one another’s freedom. Otherwise, there will always be some who are not free. Further, those who appear to have freedom will not be truly free. They will not be free to pursue any course they’d like, as they must always fear losing their freedom — losing their status — and becoming just another of the oppressed. Further, we do not have to balance freedom and happiness. Freedom entails happiness, as people will not do what makes them miserable if they are free to do otherwise.

“My particular end should become identified with the universal end… otherwise the state is left in the air. The state is actual only when its members have a feeling of their own self-hood and it is stable only when public and private ends are identical. It has often been said that the end of the state is the happiness of the citizens. That is perfectly true. If all is not well with them, if their subjective aims are not satisfied, if they do not find that the state as such is the means to their satisfaction, then the footing of the state itself is insecure.”

— This and all quotes above from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

the best thing to do when one is fretting over how distorted and ambitious humans are is to go out and help others. — Tom Storm

But possibly the best thing to do when one is fretting over how distorted and ambitious humans are is to go out and help others