I think I just figured out why things might be so bad in the United States and maybe elsewhere as well.
And it really runs counter to the way I’ve always seen the world.
I think the first time I started thinking about this was a few months ago when I heard the story of some random guy in the 1800s or 1900s who was like 17 or 18 or 19 years old, and he’s just in his proper clothes. He works all day every day, goes to church, has two kids and a wife, and probably got started being an adult like this at around 16 or 17.
It always struck me how during that time, when we look at somebody who’s like 30, they look like they’re around 60 today. They have these old wise faces that just look very aged and experienced.
And what just struck me is the idea that maybe we’re just a bunch of lazy children. Like, fundamentally, maybe that’s our problem.
Maybe the best thing you could do for yourself and society is to be religious and start a family extremely young.
But even more so than those tactical components, I think it’s actually the mindset that’s the critical piece. What I mean to say about the idea that maybe we should be religious and have a job and have kids early in life is actually something a lot more extreme and fundamental.
It’s the societal understanding that if you’re not these things, you are a failure.
I read a decent number of biographies about people in the 1800s and 1900s. Admittedly, these are exceptional people—otherwise you wouldn’t be reading a biography about them—but it also describes the society in which they lived. And this mentality seems present.
Aside from the fact that everyone in that 1906 picture is white and probably racist and probably smokes 25 packs a day of unfiltered tobacco before enjoying far too much alcohol—putting all that aside—everyone here is hustling. Look how they’re dressed. I don’t care about fashion. What I’m trying to get at is that what’s considered normal and required is to be grinding in a productive way.
As an aside, this is Market Street. And I think if we took that same video today it would actually look very similar. People walking extremely fast, going about their business in a similar sort of grinding way.
What I’m struck by are the massive paradoxes here. I’ve come to believe that not being pushed in this way—with requirements on yourself, most likely due to some sort of convention of the time—is really bad for you.
I think if you take a random kid from this photo who is dressed like a 36-year-old business professional, and you look at the difficulty of their life, it would seem extremely horrible today.
But maybe anxiety is worse. Maybe depression is worse. Maybe having no direction in life and being addicted to cannabis and social media and porn and opiates is worse. Maybe it’s worse by a lot.
The happiest kids I know
As I’ve talked about many times before, the happiest kids that I know of are in first and second generation immigrant families.
I feel like their lives are very similar to the lives of those kids in 1906.
Their lives are on strict schedules. Their entire days and weeks and months and years are planned out. There’s no such thing as sitting around doing nothing. You are always studying or working or preparing to do one of those two things, or you are briefly resting and celebrating the fact that you have done them.
And their parents never shut up. They are constantly feeding them life lessons and telling them how difficult it’s going to be in the future and trying to mold them into a perfect little instrument of producing value for society.
Of course they are going to go to college. Of course they’re going to have a good job. Of course they are going to be religious. Of course they’re going to give them grandkids.
They know this when they are 7. This is not even a conversation.
Everyone in that picture in 1906 also knows this. And everyone in traditional Jewish and Islamic households also knows this.
I know that anecdotes are not data, but I’m struck by the fact that everyone I’ve ever met who lives in this type of world can be busy and stressed and face hardship, but I’ve never seen a single one that was unhappy.
Beaten down into the ground, yes. Struggling, yes. Wishing they could have a better life sometimes, yes. But not unhappy.
I contrast this with the millions of people that we all know and see throughout media everywhere, and I dare to say that most people are unhappy. And most people have precisely this same approach to life—the one without urgency, without structure, without expectation.
My own example
I’ll take myself as an example. I had to search for meaning in life. I have always been employed, but I don’t think I really achieved true meaning until the last decade or so.
The way I found it was through some very obscure and future-focused view and approach to life that I’m honestly lucky to have found. I also think it’s fragile and can sometimes be fleeting. So I’m not sure it’s what I recommend as a system for others.
I’m not religious. I don’t have kids. And I don’t think the way other people think. The more I think about it, the more I think I’m very lucky that I have not been depressed my entire life—basically floating around inside a world of existential exploration and wonderment. I consider myself lucky.
I now have extreme clarity in terms of direction and meaning, but I’m also over 50. I’m not sure I can recommend to anyone a system that has them in that state for multiple decades.
So what am I getting at?
Good question. Let me try to answer that for myself.
I think unhappiness comes from surprising and counterintuitive places.
The unhappiest people I know are not the ones who are doing too much, with too many rules and too many expectations, but the people who are doing virtually nothing.
I don’t think humans are meant to do nothing. I think it’s really bad for people. And I think it may be dangerously harmful to send a kid into the world without a sense of responsible urgency.
That’s not even far enough. I think it may be harmful to send a kid into the world without the sense of impending default failure if they do not become useful members of society.
It’s like being born without an urge to eat food, and being at constant risk of dying of hunger.
It’s not that they wanted to eat and couldn’t find food. No, it’s much worse than that.
Or putting it another way—food never became essential to them, so they died of malnutrition.
I think this is what we do when we raise humans with no requirement and urgency to become someone.
It’s not just the parents
But it’s not just one kid and the parents. It’s the entire peer group and indeed the entire society.
It’s not as if a husband and wife can suddenly figure this out and start telling their kids this, because they are surrounded by kids who don’t have this mentality because their parents lack it as well.
The system worked in the past, and it works for immigrants, and it works for the religious, because everyone in that community and peer group is doing the same thing—which is the mechanism of the urgency and the pressure. It just becomes the thing that is expected.
I think we have stopped raising humans as coiled springs ready to be released into the world.
And instead, we are raising blocks of Jell-O sitting on a plate. Sensitive to any vibration in the room and temperature change, with no desire in the world.
It must be said that it’s infinitely more difficult to raise a coiled spring than a block of Jell-O.
To raise a block of Jell-O you need only tell them that they can be whatever they want when they grow up. You have infinite options. And you’ve already won just by being you.
It’s a nice thing to say. And it’s a nice thing to feel. But it’s also the easiest thing for the parents because there’s no work involved.
If you’re raising a coiled spring, that energy has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the tireless discipline of the parents instilling the fear of God and their ancestors into them from day one.
Like I said, this is very much against how I have always thought about things. I have always seen that sort of convention as restrictive and damaging.
But now I’m realizing not just that the world is desperately in need of coiled springs, but that they are likely far happier—as children and adults—than blocks of Jell-O.
