Go to the ‘Lifestyle’ section of a broadsheet and they paint a picture that we are all struggling to deal with stress and overwhelm. This is portrayed as an unavoidable feature of modern life.

A few things make it hard to believe –

  • Firstly, it just doesn’t square with my daily experiences. I’m not stressed out and overwhelmed, while living a pretty normal lifestyle with full-time work plus childcare and sports etc.
  • The stats don’t bear it out. Working time has gone way down – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_hours_per_worker – it’s below 35 hours a week most places, 46.25 in the highest in that table. Yes when I worked 80 hours a week I was exhausted, but that’s not the norm, and the papers talk about it like it’s some inescapable trend.
  • Then there’s the stats on TV-watching. How can it be true that modern life is hectic AND people watch telly for three hours a day?

I know this is coming across as a rant diguised as an AskLemmy question, but I have real curiosity about it… am I the exception for not feeling busy? Is there some explanation I am missing for why people in a society with 35-hour workweeks feel busy? Do you find the ‘hectic modern life’ narrative relatable? Do you think people are lying about being busy for some reason, e.g. to avoid being asked to do things?

  • underthunder@thelemmy.club
    1·
    9 hours ago

    There’s been this narrative for a while and there’s some good reasons for it. It’s different for different people, of course, and a lot has to do with how each of us deal with these emotions and situations. But something is happening in the US that makes these things feel 10 times worse for many people. Our psyches are being assaulted seemingly 24/7 by one man and the cult that surrounds him and we’re normalizing it. When I was younger I would never have imagined the American people would vote for a man like Donald Trump. I’ve heard the response of “just stop watching the news” or “don’t pay attention”, but that’s basically impossible. Yesterday I saw a man who is president of the United States on a national TV show yelling and screaming at his interviewer who rightly pointed out there is absolutely no evidence for his assertions where his only reply was vitriol. And examples like this can occur daily. I’d say for most people they feel the heavy weight of the pall cast over the US from this administration.