Reuters reports in 2019 “Suicidal thinking, severe depression and rates of self-injury among U.S. college students more than doubled over less than a decade.”
Today, people have more money, better health, better housing, more education, and live longer than at any time in history. However, people are unhappier than at any time since data began to be collected. Why is that? Did the Beatles have it right when they sang, “Money can’t buy me love…”
Unhappiness comes from, well that’s not got a single answer… or does it? We know unhappiness is hardly confined to Americans. “Germans are lonely, the bon vivant French are lonely, and even the Scandinavians . . . are lonely. The British prime minister . . . recently appointed a ‘Minister of Loneliness…’” Hymowitz wrote.
Here in the US we are seeing increasing drug and opioid addiction, less human interaction, and constant cellphone use. Young people fear for their future. These are among the most widely offered explanations. But is the biggest reason the loss of values and meaning? How will we answer that question? Not many are asking it.
Values
The United States was founded on two sets of values: Judeo-Christian and American. This combination created the freest, most opportunity-giving, most affluent country in world history. This is an objective fact. This is why people from every country on Earth struggle to immigrate to America. It was true in the past and continues.
Chief among the American values were freedom and independence. Most important in supporting those values is keeping the government as small as possible. This allowed people to create a non-government centered society. It enabled non-governmental institutions to provide Americans with friends and those friends to be their network of support. The neediest Americans got help locally from family, friends, and community.
The government has gotten ever larger. That growth costs money and time. Many of the non-governmental groups have dwindled in number or simply disappeared. There are even people who spend their time actively trying to destroy them. It seems a curious use of one’s time to spend it trying to destroy the works of another. It takes a certain type of individual.
American vs. other
Another set of values is frequently referred to as middle-class values. Marxists call them bourgeois values. These include getting marriage before children, making a family, getting a job, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and patriotism. These have been and continue to be under attack. Today’s America’s elites seem to hate them.
That hatred and the actions coming from it are having results. The majority of births to millennials are to unmarried women. A 2018 Cigna study says single parents are generally the loneliest of Americans. The percentage of American adults who have never been married and who have no children is at a historic high. There might be a hint here.
Until the 1960s, Americans grew up loving their country. We looked admiringly to the Founders. We believed in America’s values; liberty foremost. Americans did not ignore the bad parts of their history. We were wise enough to recognize that what made America exceptional were not its flaws. We knew people are human, they have flaws and make mistakes. Those truths are universal.
America has made mistakes but moves to correct them
What has set America apart isn’t the flaws it is our virtues. Americans changed things in ways that made life better for all. This strong American identity provided generations of Americans with roots, community, optimism, and meaning. Then there is patriotism.
But I digress, thus we come to an important reason for all this unhappiness: a lack of meaning. Aside from food, the greatest human need is meaning. And nothing has given Americans or any other people as much meaning as religion. Thanks to Victor Frankl for that thought found in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”.
In western society since World War II, God and religion have been swept into the dustbin. The result is more than a third of Americans born after 1980 affiliate with no religion. This is unprecedented in American history. Americans were Christians before they were Americans. In Europe, it is even worse.
Teach your children well…
The decline in Gog and religion; Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism is part of the problem Their demise, the demise of the providers of meaning; is this the single biggest factor in the increasing sadness and loneliness. Is this true among young people in America and around the world? A 2016 Journal of the American Medical Association contains a study. It found American women who attend a religious service at least weekly were five times less likely to commit suicide. Common sense suggests this applies to men as well.
Young people have been told God is nonsense. We have told them their country is essentially evil. They have been taught their past is deplorable and their future is bleak. We have taught our children marriage and children are not important. We have created our own problem. It wasn’t broke but we fixed it.
Why are so many young people depressed, unhappy, and angry? It’s not capitalism or income inequality. Neither patriarchy nor even global warming really makes anyone unhappy. It’s having no religion to believe in. We have no God to believe in. And we taught our children they have no country worth believing in either. What does that leave them with? Depression and no meaning… Unhappiness Comes From…
