Hakan
@hakanderin
Prius te ipsum, deinde cetera.
191 okur puanı
Kasım 2017 tarihinde katıldı
Şu anda okuduğu kitap
"...the more people value materialistic aspirations as goals, the lower their happiness and life satisfaction and the fewer pleasant emotions they experience day to day. Depression, anxiety, and substance abuse also tend to be higher among people who value aims encouraged by consumer society.“
Describing the systemic founts of loneliness, the U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy wrote: "Our twenty-first-century world demands that we focus on pursuits that seem to be in constant competition for our time, attention, energy, and commitment. Many of these pursuits are themselves competitions. We compete for jobs and status. We compete over possessions, money, and reputations. We strive to stay afloat and to get ahead. Meanwhile, the relationships we prize often get neglected in the chase."
Social isolation inhibits the immune system, promotes inflammation, agitates the stress apparatus, and increases the risk of death from heart disease and strokes. Here I am referring to social isolation in the pre-COVID-19 sense, though the pandemic has grievously exacerbated the problem, at great cost to the well-being of many.
We now know without doubt that chronic loneliness is associated with an elevated risk of illness and early death. It has been shown to increase mortality from cancer and other diseases and has been compared to the harm of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
Corporations are ingenious at exploiting people's needs without actually meeting them. Naomi Klein, in her book No Logo, made vividly clear how big business began in the 1980s to home in on people's natural desire to belong to something larger than themselves. Brand-aware companies such as Nike, Lululemon, and the Body Shop are marketing much more than products: they sell meaning, identification, and an almost religious sense of belonging through association with their brand. "That presupposes a kind of emptiness and yearning in people," I suggested when I interviewed the prolific author and activist. "Yes," Klein replied. "They tap into a longing and a need for belonging, and they do it by exploiting the insight that just selling running shoes isn't enough. We humans want to be part of a transcendent project."