On a side note, while in the majority of cases I’d be the first person to defend individual freedom and be supportive of people finding their own passion (reefing or not), I feel like what’s contributing to the destruction of so many marriages and families these days is the modern obsession with “self-actualization” and “finding yourself” that has reached cult-like levels. We’re pressured by society to always want more, to never feel content and to feel guilty for being content. This pressure comes from peers and wider society, and I feel it is reaching the point where being “normal” as in just wanting to get married and start a family is becoming the minority view that people are almost ashamed to admit that’s what they want because they might be met with attitudes like “but why?” or “but there’s so much more.”
Yes there is so much more but I believe that happy and stable families raise happy and well-adjusted kids, which in turn makes for healthy societies. Studies have proven that even when both couples are doing well, kids raised by happily married parents do better than kids raised in any other kind of arrangement including the “sambo” arrangement that’s taken the Scandinavian countries (and increasingly other Western European countries) by storm.
It’s a byproduct of this hyper-competitive, hyper-capitalistic world that so many of our natural desires are being unfulfilled. When everyone is made to “feel special” and duped into thinking they can and should “want it all”, that there’s always the “next best thing” and that if you’re not on a perpetual search for it then your life’s basically a failure. If anything it’s becoming looked down on to just be happy with what you have, and this consumerist attitude of compulsive “upgrading” has definitely carried over into marriage and relationships.
People are losing the ability to form genuine relationships due to modern society’s emphasis on positive psychology and the whole, absolutely disgusting idea of “selling yourself.” It’s degrading and turns yourself and others into commodities. Everything’s become about efficiency rather than what’s inside. The days where people took time to know each other, to form fewer but more lasting relationships, are coming to an end.
I consider myself an individualist at heart with a deep fear of groupthink and peer / group pressure, but I don’t think modern society is doing it right.
