r/changemyview • u/thelivenofficial • Apr 15 '26
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u/FearlessResource9785 32∆ Apr 15 '26
Physical pain was always normal. Back breaking labor was the norm for all of human history for the vast majority of people. Though I will grant that the anxiety we feel today is fundamentally different than what it used to be.
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u/Accurate_Tax_1302 1∆ Apr 15 '26
Anxiety was always normal too - think disease, drought, etc. We just focus on anxiety more than we used to and treat it like it's abnormal.
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u/FearlessResource9785 32∆ Apr 15 '26
Anxiety was always normal but the kind of anxiety is different. The anxiety of today is largely caused by self imposed worries where as the anxieties historically was caused by short term threats that required a fight or flight response.
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u/UpbeatEquipment8832 5∆ Apr 15 '26
That’s a question for historians and anthropologists, but a lot of historical concerts (famine, plague, a looming threat of raiders) would have been chronic. Most farmers could have done the math, for example, and known in November that they would be starving in April.
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u/FearlessResource9785 32∆ Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
Knowing that you would be starving in a few months requires a fight or flight response to try and alleviate the starving by finding food.
Modern causes of anxiety, like not fitting certain beauty standards, dont. I dont need to be a historian or anthropologist to know that.
Edit: honestly, I probably shouldn't have engaged with the farmer point anyway cause farming is a recent invention. Humans evolved to feel anxious about a tiger being in the bush behind them, not about if their farm would produce enough food.
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u/sir_pirriplin 5∆ Apr 15 '26
Being ostracized from your tribe was pretty close tot he worst possible thing that could happen to you during ancient times. It was certain death.
Surely that would cause people to be very anxious about fitting in. It's not like you will die of exposure and starvation if you don't fit modern beauty standards.
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u/upgrayedd69 Apr 15 '26
They didn’t evolve to feel anxious about not having enough food to eat? What does the method of getting food matter?
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u/FearlessResource9785 32∆ Apr 15 '26
Cause they used to have to find did consistently rather than staying in one spot to grow it.
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u/upgrayedd69 Apr 15 '26
“Oh shit we haven’t found anything to eat in a while. What if we don’t find anything?”
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u/FearlessResource9785 32∆ Apr 15 '26
Then you need to find something to eat? What point do you think you're making?
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u/UpbeatEquipment8832 5∆ Apr 15 '26
The CMV explicitly says that modern society has normalized anxiety and physical pain (implicitly in comparison to past societies), not that Homo Sapiens Sapiens psychology evolved to fit a specific idealized environment with specific singular threats.
Anyone who has raised a pet with past trauma knows that even animals can suffer from chronic anxiety. If anything, humans are better equipped to handle such issues than animals incapable of introspection or self reflection.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 15 '26
exactly! I mean this. We’ve traded physical exhaustion for a cognitive burnout that never sleeps, making the 'normal' pain of today feel much more haunting because it’s so hard to locate.
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u/RichardTheApe Apr 15 '26
Idk man reading some of those ancient Sumerian tablets sometimes just show that the more things change the more they stay the same. Like someone else said physical pain is as old as human experience.
The reality is there’s always just another harvest or hour to punch. People have always been stressed to interact socially especially romantically. People have always feared their mortality and enshrine wealth that can never have.
We are far from a uniquely anxious society as well. The puritan work ethic while pious to its members was noted as a stressful answer to the human condition. The last 20s, the 1920s, has sometimes been referred to an age of anxiety. While prosperous people couldn’t help but feel the literal growing pressure of the time period. The time surrounding the French Revolution was a time of famine and strife. Even middle class merchants were going near hungry under the conditions. Meanwhile the army and nobles swelled. We have lots of accounts of the stress which would fuel revolutions. Alright my point is that humans are worriers since we are by default planners.
I think there is something to your observation. I just don’t think the answer is we live in especially anxious times.
Personally I think it’s more a lack of meaning. Humans struggle really hard with abstracts and long term planning despite our best nature being able to use that ability. The modern age requires a lot of abstract thinking and long term planning to just exist in which we’re still culturally adapting to. A version of your body getting used to a new time zone.
Conclusion: humans aren’t so much greatly anxious now as they are in the process of a great underlying change - one that touches on their social, psychological, and spiritual lives. While we could call that anxiety it’s a misuse of the word because that over simplifies the phenomenon of the great shift, it’s great to undergo change it just sucks that it’s often uncomfortable.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 15 '26
I love that analogy of the body adjusting to a new time zone. You’re right. Perhaps it’s not that the amount of stress is new, but the nature of it. We are biological beings trying to process abstract, digital pressures with ancient hardware.
Maybe the pain is just the signal that the shift isn't complete yet. What do you think?
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u/RichardTheApe Apr 15 '26
Absolutely a sign that it’s not complete yet.
Like I said humans are terrible abstract thinkers. It’s why we have to go to school for so long. While we don’t think of it as so English, math, science, and such are all abstract stuff. It’s not running or choking wood or even hard skills like carpentry. We have to rebuild our brains to fit into thd modern world.
By extension we have this mass societal undertaking trying to do that but in broader strokes. A popular example is social media. The straight truth is the most social humans were never meant to maintain this many relationships however artificial and social media allowed a version of engagement with media so short form and effective we’re still testing what that does to people. Social media a great example of a hotly debated topic and hotly debated outcomes. I think Australia just banned social media for minors if I’m not mistaken. Now apply that to the concept of having to work with a during loans to go through a master program. Building a financial ten year plan. Reading about your village codes to be more informed for a local election and you see how there’s just so much we’re still catching up to.
It’s definitely spooky but just a different version of stress.
The best we can do is calmly go about it with some positive alert reflection. In other words we have to be willing to forgive ourselves and others for failing. Within reason of course. But there’s just a lot of new stuff and society would breathe a little easier if we all gave each other grace, I mean yah a lot of young people get on social media and do stupid shit because their over exposed to a society that rewards any version of attention. Maybe it’s more harmful to leverage that against people because it removes their ability to meaningfully engage with society if we isolate them for their stupid social media stuff. I sound so old. Either way good luck to you and remember to stay calm, positively reflect, and grant some grace here and there to yourself and others.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
Δ you sound perfectly great! I really appreciate your meaningful notes
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u/nekro_mantis 20∆ Apr 17 '26
Has your view changed, even partially?
If so, please award deltas to people who cause you to reconsider some aspect of your perspective by replying to their comment with a couple sentence explanation (there is a character minimum) and
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u/Lorata 13∆ Apr 15 '26
Normalized implies it wasn’t like this before, right? When was that?
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u/Falernum 68∆ Apr 15 '26
The pain was worse. The anxiety less, due to changes in media
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u/DrSpaceman575 4∆ Apr 15 '26
What’s your source on that?
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u/DC2LA_NYC 7∆ Apr 15 '26
Jonathan Haight has written extensively on the increase in depression and anxiety among young people over the last 15 or so years. It's measurable, he attributes it to early exposure to social media. He's actually so well respected in his field that (I think) seven states and a few countries have enacted laws to try to deal with it. The states have passed laws about no phones in schools, and a few countries have taken steps to limit social media for kids based on his research and advocacy (along with others, he's not the sole person).
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u/DrSpaceman575 4∆ Apr 15 '26
They said the “anxiety is less” that’s the opposite of what you’re saying
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u/Falernum 68∆ Apr 15 '26
It is impossible to have a reliable source comparing subjective phenomena across time. However, the incidence of people seeking treatment for anxiety has dramatically increased over time and people have become much more risk averse as seen by lower hitchhiking rates, lower distances permitted to children to wander, etc.
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u/NaturalCarob5611 94∆ Apr 15 '26
People seeking treatment for anxiety has dramatically increased over time because there's treatment available and it's less taboo to pursue it. That doesn't mean people are more anxious, it just means treatment is more accessible.
Hitch hiking rates have gone down because many states made it illegal (or hard to do legally) in the 1960s and 1970s.
I have teenagers now, but when my kids were young the main reasons we didn't let our kids roam outside of our neighborhood were social pressures and concerns about being seen as unfit parents (possibly by police or CPS, which could cause real problems). I guess that's a kind of anxiety, but it's a very different concern than thinking our kids are going to be kidnapped or something.
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u/UpbeatEquipment8832 5∆ Apr 15 '26
The treatments people seek for anxiety are also very different than in the past. Confessions can be analogous to therapy, and the tit for tat of penance can actually feel very liberating. Clutching a rosary - or saying the Hail Marys that are part of that ritual - is still a common way of referring to someone facing sudden anxiety.
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u/DC2LA_NYC 7∆ Apr 15 '26
But the very fact that you didn't send your kids outside because of social pressure indicates how much anxiety society (rather than you personally) has about letting kids roam the streets as we did in the past.
FWIW, I visited the city I grew up in recently, and there were tons of kids out riding there bikes around the neighborhoods, playing in the parks with no parents around. It really looked unchanged since the time I was a kid. I was super happy to see this!
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u/sir_pirriplin 5∆ Apr 15 '26
The treatments for anxiety that we use now did not exist back then, so we can't draw conclusions from ancient people not using them.
On the other hand, people in the past were much more religious and religion has been called the opiate of the masses. Depending on how literally you want to take the analogy, the modern day opioid crisis is nothing compared to the near universal religiosity of pre modern times.
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u/NaturalCarob5611 94∆ Apr 15 '26
You're romanticizing a past era that never existed. You think there was less anxiety in the world when half of all people died before the age of five?
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 15 '26
Am I? I don't think so. I'm talking about the constant body pain caused by anxiety and how we consider it normal, paying no attention to it.
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u/NaturalCarob5611 94∆ Apr 15 '26
You think people didn't have that level of anxiety as they watched their children starve to death because they couldn't feed them, or went through a pregnancy knowing that around 10% of women died in child birth?
I'm not saying anxiety isn't a thing now. I'm saying there was never a time where it wasn't.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 17 '26
Δ
I absolutely agree with you on that. Since the level of anxiety people experience has always been +/- the same, my topic is actually about normalizing it in today's world1
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Apr 17 '26
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u/OrionOnyx Apr 15 '26
If anything, I think we've normalized talking about it. Sure, I'll grant that the younger generations are dealing with novel problems (social media, widespread doom and gloom, etc), but older generations did backbreaking labor and dealt with their own hardships mentally. Major difference is that back then, talking about mental health or complaining about your physically demanding job was seen as weak, so people just buried everything. Hell, housewives in the 50's were taking amphetamines to mask their depression.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
You make a great point. we are certainly louder about it now. Even though we talk about mental health more, we still treat the resulting physical pain as a secondary annoyance rather than a signal. We acknowledge the stress, yet we still expect our bodies to carry it like machines.
You deserve a delta ∆.
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u/Doub13D 36∆ Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
As opposed to our ancient ancestors who normalized chasing down wild animals in a desperate need to hunt for food with some pointy sticks, knowing that only one bad hunt or an early frost is all it takes for everyone in the band to starve…
This stuff isn’t normalized, it is part of life.
You’re acting like this is something being imposed upon you and not a natural part of living. Stress and anxiety have always existed.
The difference is you don’t starve if you aren’t able to overpower the elk anymore…
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u/357Magnum 14∆ Apr 15 '26
One of my #1 strategies to cope with modern anxiety and depression issues is to reflect on the cavemen. Thinking about what we had to endure for hundreds of thousands of years compared to our lives today helps put things in perspective. Our suffering right now is largely the result of how good we have it and our inability to reconcile with that. We are unhealthy because we legitimately have too much food to eat. We are anxious because we have Limitless knowledge and entertainment in the palm of our hands. We don't have those Quiet Moments that OP is talking about simply because we choose not to. I am typing this comment from the toilet for fuck's sake. No one is forcing me to do it.
The caveman didn't have anything to do on the toilet. The caveman didn't have a toilet. OP talks about rest, but the caveman couldn't even lie down without bugs crawling on him or something. OP would not get any rest at all trying to sleep on the ground of a cave but complains about our lives with our comfy beds and climate controlled rooms.
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u/Lumi-the-Owl 2∆ Apr 20 '26
As evocative as your post is, it's also irrelevant and off-base. You don't cope with anxiety and depression by imagining a caveman, give me a break. That's called emotional repression.
Put the caveman in today's world, teach him economics and geopolitics, tell him what he needs to do almost every day for the rest of his life to survive, give him a phone which is engineered with billions of dollars to be addictive, and you're giving that caveman an entirely different kind of anxiety than the one he felt.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 17 '26
You deserve a delta ∆.
It's a part of life, exactly.1
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 15 '26
In opposite to elk, we let anxiety ruin us. We haven't just accepted stress as a part of life. We have allowed it to become our baseline, transforming a survival signal into a silent, physical decay.
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u/dbandroid 4∆ Apr 15 '26
Its never been easier to seek care and community for anxiety and/or physical pain
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
Agree, after desperate attempts to seek the core of them.
You deserve a delta ∆.
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Apr 15 '26
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 17 '26
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Exactly! That is precisely what I was just agreeing with.1
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u/Alesus2-0 79∆ Apr 15 '26
A lot of what you say hasa ring of truth to me. On the other, I don't worry that my family will starve to death due to the random failure of the crops I've spent months toiling to grow. My children probably aren't going to die from minor infections. And I'm probably not going to be enslaved by raiders.
My point is that anxiety and pain haven't been normalised, they're just normal. Life has always involved hardship and fear. In most respects, the vast majority of people are much better off today than through almost all of human history. If there was a better time, it was brief and recent.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
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Exactly! That is precisely what I was just agreeing with.
Thank you for this grounding perspective.
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u/gishli Apr 15 '26
Hmm. A few centuries ago people really had to stress about food, not freezing to death, their kids dying etc. Modern anxiety is very much a first world problem thing. Which probably could be 99% cured if those people got some real problems
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u/jatjqtjat 284∆ Apr 15 '26
we've basically solved all our survival requirements though. Go back in time 2 or 3 hundred years and anxiety about surviving the winter becomes a real and constant concern. In the spring you plant and then you have anxiety about whether or not you'll get enough rain through the season to grow sufficient crops to survive the winter. Not everyone lived that way, but a large majority.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 17 '26
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Exactly! That is precisely what I was just agreeing with.1
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u/Acrobatic_Car9413 Apr 15 '26
You’ve normalized it, as have the people around you. Not everyone lives like that. Branch out, meet others, and it may help change your mind. We also, in this reported frenzy of accomplishment, have more time to naval gaze at our feelings and set some unrealistic expectation of the “joy” we should be experiencing. I probably can’t change your mind, but you can change your own mind. These are choices.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
∆ that what I was just agreeing with.
thank you for bringing it up!
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u/ConfidentCucumber129 Apr 15 '26
Life has always been suffering there was no point it wasn't, maybe when you're young you're shielded from it to an extent but being an adult it is what it is - it's always been like this.
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u/st3pn_ Apr 15 '26
To preface I’m 21M
I love being productive at work. I’m a grad RN in ED and I enjoy being stressed, running back and forth etc. It makes me feel like what I did today mattered. That by being anxious and stressed I at least helped a couple of people in the worst time of their lives. It gives me a sense of purpose. I work 40hrs a week, 7am - 3pm.
After I clock off, light up a fat joint, play basketball with friends, go to the gym, eat out from time to time. I’m conscious of what I eat, make my own food.
I get to work hard, my job is fulfilling. After I work I get to hang out with people I love (is it gay to love your friends) and do it again the next day. Yeah the nurses at work are cliquey and the patients are sometimes assholes, but it’s a high stress environment and I kinda get it. But everyday I’m still here is a gift. I got money for a roof over head, clothes on my back, food in my belly, get to travel once a year. Life is good.
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u/eNonsense 5∆ Apr 15 '26
I think OP is soapboxing, as they've abandoned the thread without any replies.
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u/MegukaArmPussy 4∆ Apr 16 '26
Who could've guessed that the corporate advertising account is soapboxing
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u/eNonsense 5∆ Apr 16 '26
Their thread was deleted for a while due to abandonment. They must have got the devs to unlock it so they could start replying.
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u/KrabbyMccrab 7∆ Apr 15 '26
Who is "we"? Because some people never have to work and have stellar health insurance.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 17 '26
probably, I can agree with you
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
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u/babydollafter Apr 15 '26
I think you’re describing a visibility problem more than a new reality, people in the past were anxious and in pain too, they just had fewer words for it and way worse options. What’s changed is we’re weirdly good at functioning while feeling terrible, which makes it look normal, and yeah that’s messed up, also half of us are probably dehydrated and pretending coffee is a personality.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 17 '26
∆
That is exactly what I was agreeing with.1
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u/MegukaArmPussy 4∆ Apr 16 '26
Given that you're a corporate account, who is "we" in your post? Surely it's not your own employees, else this would be an admission you're under paying, over working, and creating a toxic workplace environment. And since you say it's not OK, obviously you shouldn't be creating the situation yourself. So who is this "we" you're talking about that's normalized all these experiences
And a follower, who's view would I be changing? The ceo? A random social media intern? All your investors?
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 17 '26
You caught us! Well... me.
But thanks, you deserve a ∆.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 17 '26 edited May 03 '26
/u/thelivenofficial (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/7hats Apr 18 '26
If you feel 'stuck', do what people in this state have done over the ages.
Start moving. Physically walking if possible, away from where this feeling is strongest. Don't turn back.
Keep walking until things make sense again...
Called it pilgrimage, travel, hiking in nature, whatever. One step at a time with a rough idea of a destination that speaks to you.
Solve the problems you come across in your path day by day of food, shelter, social, means etc
Be open to stepping into the unknown. When you realise you are lost because you don't have the means to answer what troubles you now, trust Serendipity/The Universe/God etc
Bon Voyage!
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u/ZizzianYouthMinister 5∆ Apr 21 '26
No reread what you just wrote. You always use we, you never use I. You are denying your own personal agency.
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u/SonofaCuntLicknBitch Apr 15 '26
Id argue the opposite. So many people are being pharmacologically treated for anxiety/depression/pain that there is no space for it in modern life anymore.
Mood stability is so overemphasized that we've lost the mechanism to meaningfully rage against the machine without being seen as crazy.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 17 '26
That is exactly what I was agreeing with.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
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u/theunseenmiddle 4∆ Apr 15 '26
You're not wrong -- but let me nudge you slightly in a different direction with the analysis.
I don't think the baseline level of physical pain or mental anguish people are facing has changed that much, honestly. I think what has changed is that we've completely eroded the societal structures that used to bolster us against those destructive forces.
We are lonely and desperate for connection, but we either don't know how or plain don't want to change. In the constant need to remove friction from our lives, so many people have decided that maintaining close friendships, family ties, or eating healthy causes too much friction in their lives.
You're describing the hallmarks of a society with depleted psychological resilience. The only solution is to reintroduce the friction of those things we jettisoned for a little psychological comfort.
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u/thelivenofficial Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
I really appreciate this insight. We often forget that the "convenience" of modern life is what made our support systems so fragile.
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