Nowadays the leading cause
of death is heart problems. Heart attack, heart failure, stuff like that. But they
say that by the year 2020, the leading cause of depression will no longer be
heart issues. Depression. An emotion. How can an emotion become a leading cause
of death? Hell, how can an emotion cause a single death in the first place? Surprising, eh? Well, emotions can affect our
physical health like if you are having a bad day you get headaches and stress
can cause lots of illnesses to occur also.
This got me thinking. What is
it that has changed in our lifestyles or living patterns that has resulted in
such a huge increase in the level and incidence of depression that is resulting
it in being the next leading cause of death? Well one day I was lurking and
scrolling down my Facebook newsfeed and the answer suddenly hit me. Loneliness.
Our patterns of living and changes in the nature of social relationships have
changed which means that now we have like become so individualistic that we no
longer care about other people but ourself.
How did Facebook bring about
this realization? Well I saw a quote there which I would like to share:
“Loneliness doesn’t come
from not having people around you, it comes from not having people around you
to share those things that seem important to you”.
What would happen is that in
the past, family sizes were bigger plus there was strong social cohesion. People
would interact closely with each other and everyone had someone they can call
their “friend”. Because there was like so many people to choose from, everyone
was easily able to find someone to hang out with and someone of their type
also. But then as societies expanded and became more complex, our nature of social
relationships changed. You would think that as family size declined (which
personally I think is a good thing that this happened), families have fewer
members so they’d be more close-knit and more attached to each other? But unfortunately
that is not the case as the nature of social relationships have changed. They are
too individualistic. They only care about themselves. They simply do not want
to, or unable to, take out the time to hang out with family members or friends
and let them share what is important to them and take an interest in it.
What is the end result of
all of this? Loneliness. And what does loneliness cause? Sadness. And what does
sadness result in? Depression. And we all know the consequences of depression. It
is a fact of the world that people need people. Even the world’s most introverted
person, the world’s most shy person, the world’s biggest schizoid, needs
people. All people need people. But no people have people.
I have spent the past ten
years of my life interacting with individuals online. The stereotype is that
the internet is a place for lonely people with no friends. When I first joined
the internet, this was not even close to being the case. But just over the
course of ten years, I have been seeing this stereotype slowly come true. People’s
families have moved away or they don’t get along and people with whom they were
friends with have moved away or due to whatever reason the friendships have
dissolved. So, as people need people, many have began to flock to the internet.
This all concludes with the
quote that I posted towards the beginning of this passage. It is the little
things that count. You want to share those little things that are important to
you. It can be an achievement, a tough time, an incident that happened to you. Sometimes
you just want to talk, you just want to share things. And due to the current
nature of social relationships this is not a possibility for many people. Which
results in the cycle. Loneliness to sadness. Sadness to depression. Depression to
many other issues. Many other issues to death.
Solution? In my eyes the
only solution is changing the nature of
social relationships and taking the time to listen to those around us.
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