The Age of Anxiety
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Anxiety is, quite frankly, horrible, and if you deal with it, you didn't need me to tell you that. I've always had, I think, a very detail-oriented attitude about everything I did, and so in that way, I'd say I've personally dealt with it ever since I was born. I've always felt some kind of pressure to strive after perfection. I think in school it was, and is now that I'm at university, the perfect grade; sports, it was the perfect score; online, it was and continues to be
1:01 the perfect graphic, the perfect camera shot, the perfect audio line, the perfect formulation of my thoughts in the script, the perfect everything. And if I didn't pursue that perfection, I knew nothing would happen, and I still know that. But in my heart and my gut, I continue to feel this force pressing down as though if I didn't do exactly what it guided me to, then all hell would break loose and I would be failure, and I wouldn't be good enough, and I would never be good enough, and whatever else that I could conjure keep me doing exactly what I had to. Of course, it never mattered if I actually reached that perfection, because inevitably in doing so, I would create a new perfection for me to strive after anyway. In that way, perfection was always out of reach.
One-third of Americans are showing signs
2:03 of anxiety or depression during the corona virus pandemic. That's according to a US Census study, but they said about 50% of the 1,000 people that were surveyed felt more anxious than last year. Colleges around the country are reporting more cases of depression, anxiety, and suicide among students, more than ever before. Chronic stress, like being overworked or having arguments at home, can affect a brain size. It's something in your brain that you can't control. After hell, it was the worst nightmare that you can imagine.
These are what I like to refer to as existential anxieties, and not everybody is going to experience them, and for that reason, I'd put them right in the middle between general and personal anxieties. General anxieties are something I think almost everybody will experience: simply feeling stressed or worried in response to something that's external to you, whether it be your job, your friends, or something like that. For that reason, these are referred to in psychological literature as state anxieties, and in
3:06 America because this is at the broadest level stress it is a part of everyday life on an ever increasing basis according to Gallup polling data it is on the rise quite substantially actually over half the u.s. population experience and quote a lot of stress in the past day YouGov polling data corroborates this finding that half of Americans often worry about things outside of their control polling from the American Psychiatric Association also confirms this finding that two and three people were extremely or somewhat anxious about health and safety for themselves and their families again the important takeaway is that the Gallup in APA data seemed to indicate that all of this is following an upward trend that is more people seem to be experiencing anxiety stress and worry over time a 2010 study concerning high schoolers and college students also seems to corroborate this inference finding general increases in all of these factors since 1938
4:08 Of course, anxiety and worry are nothing new. As a term, anxious derives from the Latin anxious, now itself from the Latin and get, meaning to choke, relating the often described experience of anxiety as a compressive force pushing down or choking someone is a psychiatric condition. We could go back even further to the Greek physician Hippocrates, who diagnosed various cases of what we would today diagnose as social anxiety disorder.
To help people deal with this and the stressors of life, more generally speaking, philosophers were often—Plato, famously speaking of training both the body and the mind in music and gymnastics, such that one could be free from worldly stresses. Later, the Latin Stoics would speak of achieving tranquil ethos, the work of becoming a sage having an undisturbed peace of mind, tranquility, and a freedom from the worries of the world. Later, in the 1800's, various philosophical movements such as existentialism would repeat this call:
5:10 thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard attempting to reground philosophy once more in the lived experiences of human life what's interesting to me is that when I look online now these are the very groups that are being touted as a means to relieve anxiety not only our searches for stoicism on the rise but when I look them up I see that millions of people are watching videos the same goes for videos describing the transformative power the psychological theories developed by Western thinkers like Friedrich Miescher famous for nihilism but also for the concept of taking conscious note the self acceptance in a process called moral transvaluation on the eastern side of things Taoism is in vogue as well as a means to cultivate letting go going with the flow the way of the universe it might as well be a Chinese stoicism though it's definitely not where the transcendentalist author Henry David Thoreau wrote our lives are frittered away by detail simplicity simplicity simplicity today we have the minimalist
6:12 movement, of which one in five Americans are now a part, and which is being touted online as a means to mental clarity. To me, all of this just proves what that data indicates: the stresses of life are getting to people, and they're looking for a way out. I often hear social media as the culprit for this, often times. And like the rest times, well, it's that damn newfangled phone again. And I do think there is some merit to that, but the fact that there is so much supportive content out there also calls it into question. You could go on Discord or you could go on Reddit, and you could post about these things in servers or on subreddits specifically dedicated to it, and I don't think you could really ask for anything more. Of course, you could ask tonight anxiety, but that's beside the point. There is a means out there for people to help themselves, and it is specifically through the internet. And personally, I think that's fantastic. Like, I love the
7:13 memes that come out of it, too, like the Doomer memes and the gloom ur memes. Like, I don't know who makes them, but I relate to them, and I think that they are pretty funny and entertaining.
And there are numerous other causes for this, too, the foremost among them, in my opinion, being psychosocial—that is, they deal with the interrelation of individuals and society. The following explanation is simply one of many, one attempt to explain not why anxiety exists at all—something which would necessarily need to invoke biological and genetic factors—but something which attempts to explain why so many people are anxious right now. Consider this graph: our working hours are going down, we should have more leisure time to enjoy the products we buy. Now, consider this graph: our wages are, generally speaking, going up, we should have more money. Based on this, economists would try to tell you that the rational agent is simply maximizing
8:14 his utility. He can buy more things in less time; he should be happier. And yet, this is not what the polling relates. Those within ages typical of the workforce are those with the most anxiety. Similarly, the poorest 20% of people, those working 9 to 5 jobs, are the most anxious. Current data thus seem to indicate, with Marx theorizing, that everything cost money—I mean, rather that competition in modern work is socially alienated, in that not only does that lead to lives that are more difficult, but that when people are constantly bombarded with messages telling them to come soon products as a means to overcome that alienating life, they don't feel any better. In fact, they feel a lot worse. According to a 1996 study, this entire trend can be spoken of as a shift around the turn of the 21st century from intrinsic goals
9:14 like self-acceptance and community feeling, to extrinsic goals like financial success and in appealing appearance. Things consuming beauty products or pushing oneself to work harder, for instance, will facilitate. It should be clear then that work and consumption fuel anxiety, at least in part.
Sometimes this makes people feel metamorphose, transformed into a puny bug amidst an uncaring society. That was Franz Kafka stick. It's also Joker's take, kind of. Dive... sometimes people need medication to cope. That was Aldous Huxley's take. As philosopher Rick Rodrick said in the 1990s, "I don't know how long American society would hold together if it was not a society of addicts. When you think of deleting drugs, and all of them are like either Valium or Prozac, you know, and then look at the drugs the kids take, look at ghetto drugs, look at the normal and official drugs, which are very powerful, like alcohol and cigarettes, the
10:15 truth of the matter is, Marx was wrong: religion is not the opium of the people. Today, opium is the opium of the people. It works better.
Likewise, not only is there a higher prevalence of stress and worry in America compared to the rest of the world, rate of clinical diagnosis of anxiety is as well. The consequence of this is that America is indeed at the forefront of antidepressant consumption—drugs like Prozac and Valium, which also treat anxiety. Don't take this as a denigration of these drugs, however. There's evidence that heart disease develops in part due to one's social environment, and if you don't want to die from that, you should probably take your medication for it. The same goes for anxiety as well. This information rather exists to demonstrate the following correlation: just as American individuals subjectively report higher rates of anxiety, so too does the American medical system objectively report higher prescriptions of anxiety medication. The subjective and objective
11:17 data both seem to support the conclusion that Americans are increasingly anxious. Because America has also witnessed a shift to products as a source of life value, and because consumption rates seem to correlate with all of this information, social pressures to work, provide, pay your bills, and consume thus seem to be origin of anxiety as a cultural issue.
Of course, all of this also intersects with numerous other instances of injustice as well, economic and otherwise. Women are far more likely to experience anxiety than men, African Americans are more likely to experience PTSD than Caucasians, and those in the LGBTQ community are more likely to experience numerous comorbidities than their cysts and heterosexual counterparts. Thus, in addition to economic pressures, such social minority groups witness their own social pressures, whether it be the pressure of women to conform to idealized notions of femininity, or of LGBTQ individuals to
12:17 fit into social roles which are entirely distinct from their personal identities. In either case, such pressures seem to manifest as clinical conditions.
Again, I have to make clear that this is one explanation of many, one which in and of itself leaves out a lot of information and is thus a gross oversimplification the facts. There are arguments from the growth of the media and technology, some psychiatrists going so far as to recommend that they're anxious and depressed patients don't watch the news—something I'm sure Donald Trump is not helping to make any easier. China... this, of course, is the flip side of social media as well, and how it plays into one's existential anxieties.
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I'm a very private person, I need time alone, and so that perfectionism that I mentioned at the beginning of this video was something that I gradually learned to let go of, taking that time for myself when I needed it. Likewise, it and other
13:21 related existential anxieties got much worse when I got to college and could no longer have that space where I could freely decompress from social pressures. And, you know, don't get me wrong, I've had a great time at college, but being there, like I said, I don't have space to decompress. I always feel like I'm comparing myself with others, like I'm in competition with... and that's not even an internal thing, that's in part because I have to be. The grading curve forces me to do so. There have been times this year where I would, with a couple of my friends in similar classes, calculate number of points available in a class, the number of people available in a class, the ratio of people that will actually get an A based upon the grading curve, and then the minimum number of points required to actually meet that threshold. To do that and to maintain those assumptions, I have to be generally aware of how everybody else is doing in the class at any given point in time, and of course, all that is in addition to
14:21 actually studying and becoming proficient in the course material. Of course, all of that is anxious nonsense—what Alan Watts would call "mental chatter"—but at the same time, all of it is informed by what I think are very real economic anxieties concerning getting a job, that psychosocial explanation that my men. When social conditions are intrinsically competitive, when you're comparing resumes and GPAs with people all the time, and when you're predicating your self-worth on how many service trips you've done or whether you've got the right things on that resume or whether you've got the right number of things on that resume, you can't help but be constantly asking: "They have that on their resume. They've done these things. I haven't done those things. When can I do them? How can I do then? Who will they look good too? When will they look good to them? How can I do it? Am I gonna be good enough to actually do anything I want to? And I good enough, period?" And the thing is, I'm
15:25 not even alone in these thoughts. Go on Reddit, go on College Confidential, you're gonna see students in high school, and now in middle school, to comparing SAT scores, starting businesses and nonprofits. Like, I don't even understand how people have the time and the resources for that; it is mind-boggling to me.
In any case, these are all axia logical questions; that is, they're based on value and worth, and I could keep asking them until the end of time—indeed, anybody could—and I would never get any answers, because they simply don't exist. "Am I good enough?" It's a who, when, where, why, on what grounds, how can you tell? You can't, because all of those things are contextual. They depend on too many different factors to really know. But if I want to compete with people, I have to make up those answers; and deed, I have to make up the questions, too, because everybody else is, and to some extent they do get results, but at the cost of my sanity and my peace of mind.
16:26 These are mental processes that I alternately call problem-solving, dichotomies ation, and in overstepping of mental bounds. The overstepping, I think, is somewhat obvious. It's exactly what I've just related: trying to look for solutions where none exists. In doing so, I ultimately go beyond the limits of what I can know, and thus the limits of what I can say as well. Problem-solving is like the antecedent to all of that; it is the actual asking of questions where questions really need not be asked at all. As a result, when it comes to dichotomies ation, it is almost like the binding framework which relates those antecedents to their solutions, those consequence. That is, it is the breaking down of the world into two separate categories: black and white, either-or, right, wrong, good, and in that way, it is ultimately a reductionist account of things. It is trying to look for control
17:29 where I ultimately can't have any. Instead of 500 possibilities, all of which I could never fully know, fully understand, or fully relate to, I only have two: the right one and the wrong one. All of this leads to the last bit thought, and that is what I call over generalization. It is nothing other than allowing all of those overstepped thoughts over time to solidify and turn into a giant complex of judgments about what is right. This could be the right people to associate with, the right way to associate, the right way to talk, the right way to post pictures online, the right pictures to light, the way...
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...the right way to be. Again, it's all anxious nonsense, though oftentimes in the midst of these thoughts, I've found that it's become more difficult to realize that there's a
18:30 Popular adage which goes, "A man is the sum of his actions," and it's a reformulation of Aristotelian thinking concerning habit. In Aristotle's words, "We are what we repeatedly do." What I repeatedly did at college was drop, and what I repeatedly did had college was think in this existentially anxious way, leaving needed leading me to take part in activities which, though I enjoy greatly at the time, I have no legitimate interest in.
One day, after doing this sort of thing for a couple of days back-to-back, I woke up with a feeling of pressure in my head and a headache that just didn't go away. When I went outside, it looked like the world was on a TV screen, like there was a sheet plate of glass in front of my eyes separating me from everything else, like I was also no longer in my own body. I found out later that this is called depersonalization.
19:31 as this went on I began to feel a feeling of brain fog but I couldn't think clearly remember things clearly and this was coupled with fatigue and lethargy I just began to feel tired all the time and I didn't know why these together coupled to form a d-- realization of things reduction of everything to almost valueless mnestheus what I called in a blog post on this a collapse of reality as though there was nothing beyond a five-foot bubble which surrounded me as though I couldn't think any further than this pressure that I feel in my head I started having panic attacks as well the question then becomes what do you do about all of this whether it's a general feeling of stress or uncontrollable thoughts or feelings it E and worrying constantly about it what do you do as is
20:33 written in the book of Proverbs, "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." In other words—and this is straight from the Beatles—all you need is love. Not really, but it is the most important thing.
There have been numerous times this year when, in the midst of worry, I had called my grandmother and had my hot heart cooled by the warm words of her consolation. And I know not everybody has that kind of love in their life, and that sucks. Sometimes you have to seek it out, and in doing so, that person that you seek could be as simple as a friend, a distant relative, a professor, somebody on Discord. But as long as you have somebody in whom you can take loving counsel, you will be okay.
What anxiety would often tell me is that no one cares and alone—essentially conspiracy theories about myself. And though I'm not a Christian, though the quote from Proverbs and this cross in the background would have you think
21:34 otherwise, I find the words of St. Paul here to be especially compelling: "Three things will last forever: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love."
In love, I personally find that I beat this part of my anxiety because, as opposed to keeping all of those thoughts inside of me, externalize them and make them part of my relationship with somebody else. This then leads to the faith that I am okay right now, that I can maintain that relationship, that somebody else really does love me. This then leads to the faith that though I don't exactly feel like myself right now, I will someday feel like myself again.
Of course, all of this goes out the window when I'm having a panic attack or in the midst of racing thoughts that I can't control. So when it comes to those things, therapy and medication may be absolutely necessary. However, if you don't have access to those or you don't want them, the question then becomes: how do you
22:36 deal with those kinds of thoughts on your own likewise what follows is not medical advice however it is simply what has worked for me eating a balanced diet and getting out every day or two things I hear first and foremost every time when it comes to dealing with stuff like this I was already doing both when things got worse for me so I can't personally speak to how effective they are however I can say that when I am eating healthfully and I do get out and change my environment experience things I do feel much better and this is backed by data by the way when you change your environment you help to change yourself by exposing yourself to new things for me it's absolutely true getting out being around people doing the things I actually enjoy they help to remind me that the world is not in my head but there's more out there than I can possibly conceive these are mantras that I often repeat to myself and they focus particularly on existential thinking concerning overgeneralization
23:38 Repeating them keeps that thinking in check by stopping it right in its tracks. If you're curious as to other mantras I've written and everything that I repeat to myself to help with my mental clarity, I've linked these down in the description below.
I repeat these mantras most often when I meditate, and I don't mean the popular conception that's saying, "Oh, in the lotus position," or whatever—though I have done that, it's just that you don't have to. Meditation has the same root word as meter, and in this way, it really is nothing more than a means to measure in quiet contemplation the things that are and the ways that they are.
For me, this is no more complex than sitting down in my bed, turning my phone off, closing my eyes, and thinking about the way things are. In doing so, I try to find the sources of my anxiety and unhappiness in myself, repeating those mantras and trying to uproot errors in my thinking. This then
24:39 leads me to take intentional notice of every anxious thought that I have during the meditation practicing uprooting them doing away with them by reminding myself that they are only thoughts and that's it I'll also try to intentionally recall positive thoughts and positive events in my life to lead myself away from anxious thinking over all a couple this with deep breathing as well the entire process I would liken to a kind of mental housekeeping something you just have to repeatedly do to keep yourself neat and tidy in the head and it can suck but again we are what we repeatedly do sometimes I'll write this entire thought process down as my meditation taking an inventory of everything I take issue with in my life what's in my control what's out of my control than everything that's positive in my life and then trying to reconcile those four categories together this I think of more so as a mental exercise keeping my mind
25:39 fit as I would keep my body fit. And it's also partly influenced by Stoic thinking, so think it really does help.
Likewise, I'm sure you've noticed that this video is full of references to literature and philosophy. In case you haven't guessed, I read quite a bit, and I can't recommend the therapeutic benefits of it enough. Reading for me is like participating in a dialogue with the greatest minds who've ever put their thoughts to paper—maybe not that one, but even so. When I don't have anybody else to talk to, I often find that reading is the next best thing, that it leads me out of anxious thoughts in a similar way to a relationship because it brings new information in. It's like looking at the world through somebody else's eyes—the best eyes, really—and finding truth and perspective that is different from your aunt.
I'll have a full list of books mentioned or referenced within this video in the description, but if you're specifically interested in calming
26:41 anxious thoughts then I recommend Epictetus handbook and Lao tzus Tao Te Ching they're both freely available online can be read within a day the first is a stoic classic of actually treating your thoughts and judgments with care learning what is and isn't in your control in the second like I mentioned earlier is a handbook of how to live a simpler calmer life which again like I said intersects very heavily with stoic thinking the quick caveat here is this meditation and reading art am hard and you're not going to notice instant results specifically because of what I mentioned earlier concerning habits we are as we've done and to be frank reading a meditation and require modes of thinking and being that are quite the opposite of what anxiety forces us to think and be this then means that you're not going to feel better instantly I didn't but I found that as I continued to do both of these things more I did feel better in the very fact that I was
27:42 doing them likewise if you're creatively inclined they are equal if not superior therapeutic benefits to self-expression and even if you're not creatively inclined you could give it a try for me it's as simple as writing poetry playing the piano making these videos or dancing maybe not dancing somehow someway getting my thoughts and feelings outside of me makes a boatload of difference and I know not everybody can just play the piano or make a video they don't have the time or the resources to do so however paper is damn cheap and 15 minutes of writing or sketching something a day can really make a world of difference above all I found that having things to do a cause to live for something to live by gets my mind away from anxious and negative thoughts as Nietzsche wrote to live is to suffer and to survive is to find meaning in that suffering and at
28:44 the same time, "He who has any Y can bear life in terms of any how." And I found those quotes on the top page of Google, but they're extremely relevant. If you can find some meaning in your suffering and transform it into something greater, you will feel infinitely better.
Another caveat here is this: even after doing all of this, I still felt terrible. My headaches didn't go away, I didn't feel any more energetic, and I didn't stop worrying about either of those things. Sometimes medication, again, is absolutely necessary. It's very easy to get bogged down and what I spoke about in the first part of this video and your own suffering as well—oftentimes I do. And for that reason above all, in addition to all these supplements and strategies, I try to remember and keep in the front of my mind that life is fundamentally good. And I know that's a very tough pill to
29:44 swallow sometimes—in fact, a lot of the time—but it is true. Of course, nobody's going to take away the pressures of the world tomorrow. It's because of that that I try to remind myself that the most I can do is accept the things I cannot change, find courage to change the things I can, and grow in the wisdom to know the difference.
I hope that some of what I've said in this video has helped someone, and I also hope that no matter who you are and what you're going through, that you feel better. And with that, this has been Mr. Amazing. Thanks for watching. [Music]
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30:47 that takes these and other usually mathematical and scientific concepts it turns them into games and puzzles that can help you actively engage with the ideas the terms antecedent and consequent are both formal terms used in mathematical logic and I love that because it fundamentally has social applications to it as I hope this video somewhat demonstrates this is exactly how brilliant teaches you logic through social applications examples and explanations that are there if you trip up along the way so if you want to learn more about logic brilliant more generally speaking go to brilliant org slash mr. amazing and sign up for free there's a link in the description to also the first 200 of you that used that link will get 20% off their annual premium subscription so if that interests you definitely check it out
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