Civilization Is Making You Sick

It’s hard for a fish in a glass tank to imagine what life would be like in the ocean. It doesn’t have any points of references. It’s never even seen the sea. 

Modern life is like that for many of us. All we know is the civilization we’re plugged into. We have no idea that there’s an entire realm of existence beyond it that is completely different. It’s hard to imagine. 

Think about the condition of our early human ancestors. Nobody told them to get up for work. None of them watched the news on TV every night. And none of them had devices that allowed them to randomly send messages to people they hadn’t seen for a decade. 

And yet that’s the world in which we find ourselves. Our biology is struggling to keep up. 

It’s not just the technology, though, that’s problematic. It’s also the philosophy. 

Philosophy itself can be a great thing for making insights. But it becomes insidious when a person practices it without realising that that’s what they’re doing. 

A lot of people fulfil “roles” and “duties” without ever taking time out to think “what do I want from life?” “How do I want to spend my days?”

Many people can’t even look in that direction. Civilization teaches them that looking after themselves is a bad thing and that they should always orientate themselves to the needs of other people. You can see this trend quite clearly in the social justice movement. The individual is bad. The collective is good. 

But this kind of attitude is actually a denial of the self. If you don’t address your personal needs upfront, it’ll lead to pathology later on. And that’s where the problems can start. 

Unintended Consequences

It’s sad that civilization can make us sick. In many ways, living in a wealthy, highly technological community full of interesting people should be a joy. But it’s the unintended consequences that get us. 

At the start of the industrial revolution, no politician envisioned people would be eating dreadful diets and spending upwards of twelve hours per day sitting in chairs. But that’s what we’ve got. And, as Jersey Hemp explains, it’s leading to all kinds of pathologies in the modern world. People are getting chronic pain, illnesses and all sorts of other disorders at a far higher rate than they ever did in the past. 

The nature of the economic system is also an issue. We love the fact that we can buy and sell how we please. None of us wants a vast dictatorial government telling us what we can buy and sell and how long we can work. 

But this freedom has, in some ways, backfired. Think about how many people you know who are racked with anxiety about their jobs. They’re unable to enjoy themselves because of the incessant need to produce. 

So the bottom line is this: civilization is making you sick. The trick is to realize the nature of the thing you’re plugged into so that you can float on top of it and protect your health in the process.