I've noticed this too, some says it's a bad habit energy we've developed in our modern society, always running to the next thing, always looking to consume. It's as if there is a sense of uneasiness that comes along with stillness.
Maybe we need to relearn the art of doing nothing?
I've been out of full time work for a while (mostly voluntary due to travelling) and I can, after 6 months feel myself beginning to settle somewhat, The first week of lying on a tropical beach did feel a little bit like torture to be honest!
I do meditate, but without being in a meditation community or "sangha", it can be hard to stay at it for extended periods, especially while travelling.
the consumption cycle is sustained because it benefits the powers that be. humans are insatiable, and as long as you are convinced that contentment requires "just one more thing," you will never be happy, you will always be hungry, and you will always want more. happiness isn't pleasure, because of hedonic adaption, pleasure eventually becomes boring and empty. happiness is contentment with what you have. it is escape from the pain-pleasure cycle. when you're content, you even avoid strong pleasure, because it disrupts your tranquility.
it's insane that young people of today believe that a good life requires living a big city, gourmet foods, craft beers, urban scavenger hunts etc. these are forms of leisure that were all but inaccessible to 95% of the world up until 200 years ago. so happiness didn't exist until today? staying in the cycle ensures that you'll be devoured by labor, until you get that "fuck you money." it's as if some guys "crushing it" really do believe that work will set them free, some day. it's just as said in "my dinner with andre":
> I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.
many techies are enormously proud of the addictive, attention-as-a-commodity prison they have built, that's kept people anxious and distracted and most assuredly unhappy. they're convinced that giving more of their labor is the answer; it is not.
Our innate insatiability brought us where we are today with all the subjective good or bad progress we have made as a species.
As far as the young people thinking that the big city is the key to the good life. Couldn't it just be that young people like beeing around young people. Big cities offer a lot of possibilities for socializing that you wouldn't get in a small rural city. Perhaps your drives or wants just change with age as your personal life changes - not because one is more right than the other. It just feels that way as you evolve as a human being.
Thanks for the good response. I've been quite aware of these things for sometime, but how to communicate and build awareness to an already hopelessly anxious and distracted populous?
It has nothing to do with modern life. The human mind is generally only simulated by change. After a while you realize change beyond a certain frequency change is annoying too (see the koan about Sakyamuni and the "middle path").
I personally find it amusing to see tools which were meant to make people see the underlying meaningless and take up monastic practice, being used as a sort of mollifying tool. Then again, I don't meditate.
"It has nothing to do with modern life. The human mind is generally only simulated by change. After a while you realize change beyond a certain frequency change is annoying too (see the koan about Sakyamuni and the "middle path")."
Of course modern technological life has had an impact on self-reflection, you can be distracted more now than ever, whenever, wherever.
"I personally find it amusing to see tools which were meant to make people see the underlying meaningless and take up monastic practice, being used as a sort of mollifying tool. Then again, I don't meditate."
Can you elaborate on the point you're trying to make here? Curious...
Maybe we need to relearn the art of doing nothing?
I've been out of full time work for a while (mostly voluntary due to travelling) and I can, after 6 months feel myself beginning to settle somewhat, The first week of lying on a tropical beach did feel a little bit like torture to be honest!
I do meditate, but without being in a meditation community or "sangha", it can be hard to stay at it for extended periods, especially while travelling.