I would say we have had the surplus a long time. It was old when the Roman Empire was young. It was old when kids asked their parents if they could listen to the bard do Gilgamesh. The surplus is simply a large number of people who can spend a good portion of their lives with at least some leisure time each day and mostly not in fear for…
I would say we have had the surplus a long time. It was old when the Roman Empire was young. It was old when kids asked their parents if they could listen to the bard do Gilgamesh. The surplus is simply a large number of people who can spend a good portion of their lives with at least some leisure time each day and mostly not in fear for their lives.
While it maybe new that we might have gotten or are close to getting a majority of humans in that condition. There never really was any period in human recorded history when large numbers didn't have that, even if they were only 5% of the world. And from that time, the numbers who had it spent time and resources finding ways to burn off that time. Drinking and drugs have always been ways. So have various hobbies, arts, etc. Going to 'oracles', for example, wasn't just for Greek Kings about to engage in mythological adventure.
This means then I suspect super stimuli doesn't really exist. You could overload easier on Big Macs, whiskey, and porn perhaps a bit easier today...but people could and did in the past as well.
Note from the video the younger man defies your sketch. He doesn't seem like someone whose been conned by a slick therapist into believing he must get therapy. He seems very smart and knows he likes therapy and knows how to make it sound like a medical necessity to others. I also noted when he said research seems to show therapy does something but it doesn't matter which therapy, that kind of sounds like what some have said about religion.
This makes me suspect we are seeing a consumption product and like most consumption products, we're going to get it and if you mess around too much with that you may just create poor substitutions rather than extinguish the actual demand for it.
But to make it condensed, I would say there's a very real chance all the rise of therapy, esp. in the US, really is shifting our need to burn off our surplus. We have shifted into making a very formal product out of the 'objective friend who will hold confidences'.
This increased consumption has probably been a net positive as it's come at the expense of less positive consumption products (i.e. getting drunk with the buds every Friday night at the pub) but also some things that we could do well to try to add more back into our lives (i.e. actually going out with the buds every Friday night).
I don't think we are being fooled into this. It's a purposeful decision mostly coming from the consumers rather than the producers who know exactly how to ask for it in ways that make it hard for insurance companies and other gatekeepers to deny them.
But remember, the reason you can read something like The Odyssey and say "I can relate to many of these emotions even though I've never been a king and butchered dozens of men who were flirting with my wife when I got home" is because back then there were people with plenty of 'surplus' and they spent the time mulling over a lot of things we mull over today. Today we have interns at HBO serve me Game of Thrones and Sopranos, back then it might have been slaves and bards but between keeping ourselves alive and eventually running out of life we had a lot of time to kill.
I would say we have had the surplus a long time. It was old when the Roman Empire was young. It was old when kids asked their parents if they could listen to the bard do Gilgamesh. The surplus is simply a large number of people who can spend a good portion of their lives with at least some leisure time each day and mostly not in fear for their lives.
While it maybe new that we might have gotten or are close to getting a majority of humans in that condition. There never really was any period in human recorded history when large numbers didn't have that, even if they were only 5% of the world. And from that time, the numbers who had it spent time and resources finding ways to burn off that time. Drinking and drugs have always been ways. So have various hobbies, arts, etc. Going to 'oracles', for example, wasn't just for Greek Kings about to engage in mythological adventure.
This means then I suspect super stimuli doesn't really exist. You could overload easier on Big Macs, whiskey, and porn perhaps a bit easier today...but people could and did in the past as well.
Note from the video the younger man defies your sketch. He doesn't seem like someone whose been conned by a slick therapist into believing he must get therapy. He seems very smart and knows he likes therapy and knows how to make it sound like a medical necessity to others. I also noted when he said research seems to show therapy does something but it doesn't matter which therapy, that kind of sounds like what some have said about religion.
This makes me suspect we are seeing a consumption product and like most consumption products, we're going to get it and if you mess around too much with that you may just create poor substitutions rather than extinguish the actual demand for it.
This may be the most deluded thing you've ever contributed as a comment to something I've posted.
Remember, dogs never need therapists :)
But to make it condensed, I would say there's a very real chance all the rise of therapy, esp. in the US, really is shifting our need to burn off our surplus. We have shifted into making a very formal product out of the 'objective friend who will hold confidences'.
This increased consumption has probably been a net positive as it's come at the expense of less positive consumption products (i.e. getting drunk with the buds every Friday night at the pub) but also some things that we could do well to try to add more back into our lives (i.e. actually going out with the buds every Friday night).
I don't think we are being fooled into this. It's a purposeful decision mostly coming from the consumers rather than the producers who know exactly how to ask for it in ways that make it hard for insurance companies and other gatekeepers to deny them.
But remember, the reason you can read something like The Odyssey and say "I can relate to many of these emotions even though I've never been a king and butchered dozens of men who were flirting with my wife when I got home" is because back then there were people with plenty of 'surplus' and they spent the time mulling over a lot of things we mull over today. Today we have interns at HBO serve me Game of Thrones and Sopranos, back then it might have been slaves and bards but between keeping ourselves alive and eventually running out of life we had a lot of time to kill.