Would young men be rioting in the streets if they didn’t have video games to pacify them?
Hear me out.
We are seeing record levels of young men unemployed and living with their parents: The future for them is bleak. Saddled with college debt, they can barely get a job that pays miimum wage, while living independently is forever out of reach.
I feel like at other points of history, there would be more social unrest, but things are exceedingly calm given the economics.
I was watching a video by Healthy Gamer, a gamer bro-turned psychiatrist. He points out that video games are very addictive and seductive because they MIMIC accomplishment. You can grind to get to the next level, you can gain new skills, you are continually put on a treadmill of constant progress. It’s very satisfying in a hollow way, satisfying in a way that might make you forget that society has nothing to offer you but debt and homelessness after you followed all the rules.
Are video games weapons of mass distraction, the metaphysical equivalent of a million Christians being fed to a million lions every day?
People kill themselves for various reasons. Mostly because of a mismatch between expectations and reality.
No Jesus will help you survive in the snow town at -30 degrees Celsius. These stories are good in the south, but not in the north.
Ok, granted, you can not find meaning if you are literally DEAD, but I think people are drawn to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs because they think it is actually some kind of pyramid you climb as a human being. You don’t think about community UNTIL you have housing. You don’t think about meaning UNTIL you have community.
But as you yourself have acknowledged, it does not work that way: someone with food and housing can kill themselves because expectations do not match reality. Someone who is homeless might survive because they think they have a mission to write music or whatever.
And yes, stories like “oh no, I have a loan, and I can’t pay it off, and nobody will hire me, even though all I know how to do is study, and I have a piece of paper” are very funny to me. If you want to make money, you will. By whatever means necessary. Just accept that the world isn’t as you dreamed.
UPD: and just admit yourself bankrupt. You won’t get a loan anymore, but on the other hand, if you can’t pay it back, that’s not so bad either.
How many people in your family have committed suicide? My cousin committed suicide in my family. I know exactly what I’m talking about. When you have nothing to eat, you don’t think about how bad it is that there are few cinemas around. You look for food. For a long time. For hours. You just don’t have time for anything else. This is real experience, not beautiful stories from social networks.
I don’t really think we’re disagreeing on anything.
You want me to understand that starving actually does suck, and I’m not disagreeing; I’m saying, “yes, and”.
Yes, starving does suck, and so does not belonging to a community or having hope for the future or having no purpose in life. And if you want to play personal credibility, I’ve been in the hospital for wanting to kill myself more than once and I went in on a full belly each time.
People need a variety of things in a variety of combinations at different points of their lifes. There is not stable pyramid guiding human psychology the way their obviously is for human biology. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has been criticized by smarter people than me on these points, and you can read their work if you’re interested.
I don’t argue that she was criticized. I just say that the problem described in the post—protests about games and comparisons with other countries—is irrelevant. In addition, for some reason, the topic starter included “evil capitalists” in the post. Maybe I didn’t describe it very well because I’m using a translator. Personally, I see this literally as a problem of the golden billion. Maslow’s pyramid is just an example.
Let me explain in more detail. Surely everyone was told as a child what successful future awaits them. How everything will be wonderful. Boundless horizons. Hardly any parent wouldn’t want this for their child. But reality isn’t like that. It doesn’t guarantee not only earnings but even life. Harsh truth. Therefore, all these sufferings in the spirit of: “cursed capitalists are profiting from us, let’s protest more. If something happens, will we protest even more?” seem very funny to me.
Especially for the USA, because the post was clearly written by someone from there. Guys, capitalists in 1996, if I’m not mistaken, provided your country with a lot of jobs at chicken factories just by giving one country free chicken under monopoly conditions. But luck doesn’t always turn its face.
So as it was sung in one Russian song:
We galloped merrily on wooden horses, We marched in war against the foolish adult world. We led an army of songs and toys together, We were very brave children.
But one day, in every child’s heart, it suddenly became empty, The fairy‑tale thread was torn. We got there, and it turned out there was simply no one to defeat. There are no adults here except us.
Time ran out, the veil fell, and everything that had so drawn us, that has always been inside us.
UPD: That’s why I wrote that suicide is almost always the result of unrealistic expectations.
I’m OP and didn’t explicitly call out “evil capitalism” by name, I don’t think. I don’t think capitalism is particularly evil, it’s just locus of propaganda that allows the system to parasitize everyone else. SInce everyone defends the system by saying, “capitalism is good!” people attack the system thinking “capitalism is bad!” But the problem is the system of aggregating power to a few that potentially exists in EVERY society.
Like, yeah, this idea that we just get rid of “capitalism” and welcome in a new Utopia is really silly. Most people won’t state that theory outright, but it’s clearly underlying their thoughts:
People suck. Societies suck. And I think it always has been that way and I think it will always be that way–at least eventually. I think the best thing to do is fight for the PRESENT and forget about the future.
I love your song, btw. What’s the title? I regret selling my bayan.
Edit: Ah, yes, I have more to say, just agreeing with you. I remember watching the Muppet Movie, the original one, as an adult–though they all have a common theme–and realizing how TOXIC it is. It firmly plants in everyone’s head that they can literally be a star.
Several years later, Tyler Durden in Fight Club said it out loud: We we were all raised to think we could all be movie gods and rockstars; but we can’t. We were lied to. And we’re pissed off. {or something like that}
I think kids raised in the US today have been told: go to school and go to college MINIMUM. What they are finding when they graduate is the economic situation is horrible and now they are PERMANENTLY in debt. I think it’s natural to be angry about that, to be put into a position of financial slavery by society…
But also you’re right–expectations have a powerful effect on people.
Edit:
But I also want to talk about existential depression, which I have. Everyone believes in SOMETHING–which is why Maslow is full of shit. That is to say, at bedrock, EVERYONE has a purpose or a meaning, something they cling to so they have a role in the world and hope for the future. For a lot of people it used to be religion, for other people it might be their career, or their family, or politics (see the myth of progress above). It’s extremely powerful and pervasive.
But at some point, you might lose your anchor. If you built your life and your children, they could die. If you built your life around your career, you might become disabled. If you built your life around faith, you might become an atheist (rare). And at that point, you have to ask yourself, what is the point of being alive?
That’s the existential crisis.
This is casually treated by a parade of comfortable white men. Camus basically just said to laugh it off. Isn’t it absurd!? we’re supposed to say. Easy enough when your life is full of material comfort and social belonging as a top professor in academe. But what if you’re poor, what if you’re alone, what if you have no purpose in the world, no accomplishments, no celebrations? What then? Existential philoosophy has very little to offer people who suffer.
One of the reasons religion is so powerfully felt among the poor and the struggling is that it offers JUSTICE. They suffer now, so they will be rewarded later. The wealthy have pleasure now, but will burn in hell later. To see that they live in an unjust world where what they want is denied them is emotionally unbearable for most people, so they fall into religion.
Thanks for the convo. I enjoy your perspective.