🤔

[solarpsychedelic]

I’ve been bummed out before but I gotta say, I am perhaps for the first time in my life experiencing anhedonia.

Feels like all the fun has been sucked out of life and nothing matters. Everything has been monetized and turned into sources of bizarre levels of competition and comparison to break up communities and that’s no fun either.

And it’s wild shit, bro. I don’t like it. Nihilism was never my thing.

Now sure, someone will leap in and point out it’s because of menopause. All right, it is a factor. But menopause isn’t going to cover or explain why younger people are feeling anhedonia as well.

 Still, I want to be aware of the problem and where it might be coming from.

Obviously, we’re in a situation where too many have abdicated their humanity , abandoned the social contract, only to look out for their interests at the expense of the greater well being. 

I also think the internet and social media have cooked our brains, myself included. Again, I want to be aware.

Throughout my internet life, I’ve used it for either academic purposes or for pop culture fandoms. Being online was for fun and relaxation.

Now I’ve come to terms with the fact that perhaps a great many more missed the fun part to use the online world to justify their biases and prejudices or to happily accept misinformation and disinformation as fact.

The consensus culture of the 70s, 80s, and 90s that I grew up in is gone. I miss it, because a consensus culture also gave us an agreement on consensus reality and shared experiences. That helped to keep us together.

Now it’s like a million channels all going at once and too many of them are devoted to BS. What used to be fringe then broke through to mainstream acceptance. Watching that development has been disorienting and disconcerting.

Like I’ve been aware of New Age magical thinking since the 70s dolphin and crystals trends and to see elements of that breaking through to the top is, well, it’s a giant red flag that something went terribly wrong with our education system and with public discourse.

As Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World:

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

Knowing the difference between fact and fantasy is necessary for mental health and the functioning of a society. And he wrote that in 1995!

He knew what he was talking about. What I admired about Sagan was his knowledge but also his passion for that knowledge. He presented learning about the cosmos as fun and useful, a worthwhile journey to an understanding rooted in science and fact.

I shudder to think how he would be treated today by the plethora of wackos who are wrecking the 21st century with their dangerous nonsense and golden calves.

What’s the antidote to anhedonia, then? Well I suppose it’s re-cultivating a passion and enthusiasm still based in fact. I have retained at least a sliver of Gen X/Elder Millennial optimism about the internet to remember there are good sites and smart people online; it’s a matter of discernment.

Spending more time reading helps, too, as does writing by hand once more in a spiral bound notebook. For my dream journal, I’ve returned to the habit of writing in cursive down the dream in a notebook, and then if I feel like the dream has significance, typing it up. I love typing yet there’s something about writing by hand that creates more calm and reflection.

Also making an effort to play the piano more by investing in an upgraded keyboard and building a library of sheet music, including the good ol’ classics like Czerny exercises. Ha, I used to dread that yellow book but now it seems like a beacon of sanity.