A Depressed World

Why are my friends so depressed? Why am I so depressed? Why the fuck is everyone so sad? It seems everywhere I turn these days I encounter another tortured soul. Another friend, colleague or casual acquaintance waging a silent war between their ears, against an invisible enemy. People are killing themselves, or at the very least entertaining the idea. Everyone is carting themselves off to their local GP for a new script of anti-depressants so they can numb themselves out to the world a bit longer – I mean oh, sorry, correct that ”chemical imbalance’’. There’re more ways than one to skin a cat, or something, right? You could just turn to alcohol, meth, or crack like so many people are doing these days to numb the pain of living, for a change of pace.

 Prescription or nonprescription, so many good human beings are turning to drugs in some form or another to numb the pain of existing so they can tolerate life for a few days longer. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), it’s estimated that around 350 million people worldwide are affected by some form of depression. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the majority of those 350 million at the very least, have entertained the notion of killing themselves. These are millions of people who should be using their cognitive abilities conjure up happy thoughts and contribute to the world and are instead using them to think about swinging lifeless off a rafter or jumping off a cliff. While a large percentage of people with depression don’t go as far as self-terminating their consciousness, too many do. Over 800,000 people commit suicide a year according to the WHO – with even more attempting to and failing.

These statistics refer to all human inhabitants of our blue planet, and it would be difficult to know what percentage of these deaths are a direct result of a form of depression – but you could safely assume a majority. The world’s littered with countries where people are still being exposed and subjected to famine, disease, war, political unrest and poverty. These 2nd and 3rd world countries are unable, in this modern time, to provide for and adequately satiate the core human needs of the bulk of their people. It’s easy for us in the 1st world to see – if we can look-up and un-illuminate our faces from whatever social media site we are browsing – to understand why those things mentioned above, could cause a person or peoples, to get depressed. What potentially adds fuel to the black blaze of depression in these countries, is the awareness that out there somewhere over the horizon there are 1st world utopias. Countries where people turn on the tap to fill their cups with water, stand under hot showers, like memes on Instagram, duck down the road for a burger and beer, with the biggest concern being what filter they will use to post it on social media.

 The primary means we inhabitants of the 1st world share our wealth and prosperity with the 3rd world, is through charity. A few righteous westerners give their time to provide aid, giving those more unfortunate a small taste of the utopia somewhere over the horizon. These Samaritans distribute clean water and basic food and other essential amenities to those less fortunate. No doubt,  it was paid for in part by some Australia 30 something guy in a suit, guilted into to donating the tax deductible cost of his daily double shot cappuccino to a teenager with dreadlocks in a mall after a good pitch. The guy in the suit probably felt good about himself for 5 minutes after giving his bank details for the direct debit and then only noticed it again at the end of the financial year, when he claimed it back on tax. The irony sometimes can be, that the guy on in the suits bank account that provided the $48 a month to World Vision, also contained weekly transactions to a psychiatrist and some pills to correct that supposedly malfunctioning neurochemistry, so he doesn’t think about driving his car off a bridge. The guy in the suit might be more depressed than the 16-year-old girl, who’s name and photo he got on the card after he signed up to donate that $48 a month. She is now happy with the prospect of not having to drink water that half the village shit in – but the guy in the suit isn’t. Why?

That’s obviously at the extreme of the comparisons you can make, comparing a young girl from a developing nation (who was starving and drunk contaminated water) and a ”well off’’ Australian man in an expensive suit from the developed world. Despite where he resides – in the ‘’lucky’’ country – with the high standard of living it offers, the law degree, the six-figure salary, the expensive car, the running water and the four weeks paid vacation per year; he is depressed. It’s easy to see why peoples from 3rd world countries get depressed – even the people of the 2nd world countries with their low wages and poverty – which puts a real drain on life. But, It is far less intuitive to see why people from a developed nation, like Australia, for example, would have reason to be depressed. We have an excellent quality of living compared to the rest of the world. High minimum wages, decent healthcare and welfare, no political instability or major conflicts – and yet a too high a percentage of our population are depressed.

This shows a failure of our civilisation. We have failed as a species in the sense that our developed nations that are capable of supporting and propping up developing countries to a greater degree, don’t. We in the western world don’t care because we are all caught in a trance – hypnotised by the vapidity and materialism that is life for the majority of us. We have also failed in the sense that we can’t get ourselves happy when the society in which we find ourselves provides all the fundamental tools and materials for us to build ourselves a happy existence. Why is it this way?

A large part of this answer, for me, stems from the stick we use to measure success and the fact that we look for happiness in all the wrong places. We are materialistic for the most part and success is largely synonymous with the acquisition of money and expensive goods in our society. Clothes, expensive cars, holidays to resorts, big salaries and supposedly successful titles are all metrics we use to judge a person’s success. We often capture these metrics in photos, in just the right light and distribute them on our social media accounts to show the rest of the world – seeking some validation. We show the world how favourable we can look from the right angle and with the right filter, in the hope that the world will also see that we represent something aesthetically pleasing to the human eye. And in turn, we hope the world validates us with some form of acknowledgement. A like, a comment, a follow. And yet despite how many followers we get, how much money we make, despite how many likes we generate it never seems to satiate that void in our souls.

Another fundamental problem is we look for happiness in all the wrong places. We will towards wealth, popularity, and fame to varying degrees and hope that we find some joy there. That’s where everyone else seems to be going in our society, so we just follow the herd in the hope that everyone else in migration knows where they are going – they must have figured out where to go – so we just follow.

With that said, we should be aware these paths do not lead us to happiness and the examples of why are found around us in abundance. Rich and famous people have reached the destination most of us are seeking, and you’ll find they don’t find happiness there. Celebrities and the financially well-to-do are turning to the same drugs the herd is to numb the pain of living. Despite the fact, they have supposed to have got where everyone else is going. The famous and the wealthy – even those who are loved and respected for their personalities and their crafts are hanging themselves on doorways, overdosing on prescription drugs and booking themselves into rehab centres on a daily basis. This shows us that this isn’t the answer to the question of happiness. If you think that money, popularity and fame can fill the hole in your being – you will be left even more disappointed than ever. Except, the realisation will hit you even harder because you had everything riding on it and now that you are there, you are just as unfulfilled and depressed as when you started your journey.

This is not to say that those who are popular, famous and rich can’t be happy. It is to say that they aren’t happy because of it directly, though. They are happy because the things that are fundamental to their nature and their happiness are seen to on some level, and it merely correlates with wealth and fame. Money can buy happiness as much as it allows them to live comfortable and without stress – beyond that it contributes no more. Popularity and fame can help happiness, in so much that they feel passionate about, love and derive meaning and purpose from the things that made/make them attractive and wealthy.

I don’t claim to have all the answers to making people happy. I know, though, that if as a culture, as a society and as a civilisation; if we changed the measuring stick we use to measure success to a great extent, there’d be a greater abundance of happier people and less depression. We classify the acquisition and stacking up of materialistic things as success and we shouldn’t. None of these things make us feel good and if they do it is only acutely and fleeting. We should measure success on the happiness of a person, how they contribute to humanity, the planet and all the things great that make us beautifully human. Like how good of a brother and sister they are. How good of a father or mother they are. How good of a friend they are. How they help their fellow humans and how caring and giving they are. How they support the maintenance of our planet. These are the real things that are universal to human nature and make us happier and lead more fulfilled lives.  We should idolise these things and seek them out – not how many Instagram followers we can get or how interesting we can depict our lives on social media – our little vapid portfolios of narcism, insecurity, and complexes.

Some people can be happy in vapidity and vanity – but ignorance is bliss. If you have a little bit more substance and depth about you, it’s no doubt you will need a bit more to quell the emptiness you feel. You will need more than a few filters and followers, or a few 00’s in your bank account. In a society where nearly everyone is looking for happiness in all the wrong places – it’s easy to see why such a large percentage of people are still depressed – despite the quality of living and the tools available to construct themselves a meaningful and happy life. People find themselves in the herd following along and keeping up the pace knowing deep down that this isn’t making them happier and yet they follow on.

If we all meditated or practiced a mindfulness practice we’d learn a lot more about ourselves, dissolve our egos and silence the constant neurotic chattering in our heads – as a result being more happy, more self-aware and less stressed. If we focused on helping other people be happy around us and fostering better relationships with the people in our lives, we’d be much happier too, as a result.

If we looked at what’s in our nature as an individual and as a human, more often, there wouldn’t be so much drug abuse and depression in our society. If we all focused and looked in the right places, people wouldn’t feel so lost. The things that make us happy are much simpler and easier to find if you stop for a second and strip the ego, the narcissism and realise what makes us human. We’ve constructed a society built on all the wrong things. A civilisation that measures success the wrong way. We’ve created a culture where we all know what we are supposed to do and where we are expected to be going, but we don’t know why we are, or why it doesn’t make us happy. If we want to rid the world of depression, the disease that has the biggest burden on our society, we in the western world need to wake from our trance. And when we wake from our trance, we need to turn our sights to those humans out there that have real reason’s to be depressed and help them. Only then can the world be happier.

-Brent