I think Eddie Vedder is quite right: “Society, you’re a crazy breed”
Eddie Vedder is a hero. One of my favorite songs of him is called ‘Society’. Which he wrote for the movie Into The Wild. A movie, based on a true story, about a young guy struggling in -and his strong will to disconnect from- the society he was living in.
This story goes back to the 90s. However, the song (and the message of the story) triggers and reminds me of its ‘relevancy’ today.
Let me explain my thoughts to you…
We currently live in a modern Western society, bringing us many (new) opportunities and chances in life, all that we didn’t have back in the days, many years ago. You could say this modern way of living has influenced our individual wants & needs. At the same time, that also requires us to make all kind of choices. On many different aspects of life.
What do we want to do for a living? Are we enjoying our job or do we need to do something completely different? Within a company or starting an own business? Do we need to buy an own house? Or do we wish to go abroad to explore the world? What kind of relationship(s) are we in? What’s next that we would like to achieve?
Recognisable?
How you live your life is not as “given” as it might have been in the past. We have a lot good stuff nowadays. Even better than back in the days. We have social security, education, healthcare, we can develop ourselves in any way we would like to. We could even jump in an airplane and set foot on a different continent on that same day.
But having all this leads to opportunities and that leads to stress. Are we choosing the right ones? What else is out there that we want or need, or could potentially do, buy or have?
“It’s a mystery to me
We have a greed
With which we have agreed”– Eddie Vedder
It feels like some kind of paradox of a prosperous society and at the same time putting pressure on it, don’t you think?
In the past our biggest worry was how to stay alive as long as possible (survival mode), now it seems our biggest worry is how to get more and more out of our lives!
If you think about it, it is weird. Living in this pretty damn good society drives us crazy. It makes us restless. But maybe we will always be like this, always searching for something we think it’ll increase our happiness. No matter where we live. No matter what we do. No matter who we are. Will we ever be really satisfied?
Besides having to cope with many choices to get the best out of our lives, there is another component creating a bit more stress in a society. According to Leon Festinger’s (1954) Social Comparison Theory, human beings tend to have a drive to always compare themselves to others. In most cases, we try to compare ourselves to those with whom we are similar. (We strangely enough do not often enough compare our lives to people in Africa, whom are begging for a bit of our way of living.) And fact is, due to our fast grown online social world, we now do make comparisons on a daily basis. I am pretty sure you all check Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin quite often, just like I do. We look. We compare. We see new things, new chances. This doesn’t make it easier. To get satisfied.
“You think you have to want
More than you need
Until you have it all you won’t be free”– Eddie Vedder
It seems like our brain now need to live in affluence and wealth. However it was meant to manage scarcity and shortage. This could be where you “need more, want better every day”. Is it a greed? Is it to be ‘better’ than others? Will it ever be enough?
Writing about the topic, and this paradox, made me realize the complexity we face, that made this guy willing to disconnect from it. I would have had no answers or solution for him. I could only say that I’m an optimistic person and therefore I sometimes just smile when silly complexity questions pop up again.
Because in the end Eddie made his point… Society. You’re a crazy breed.
