The following essay was written by my then 17 year old son for his Senior English honors class.
After reading it three times I realized that not only did I have a son who had inherited his dad’s gift for writing but also that I had done my job as a parent in raising a level headed, practical, strong, moral young white man who could go out into society and be of use. To say I was pleased with his work would be an understatement!
I am re-printing it here with his permission not only to show it off but I guess also to pat myself on the back a little!
(An Older article in which I discussed the dangers of Technology Addiction can be read HERE)
The so-called “Technological Revolution” has degraded our society, not progressed it.
This “Revolution” has made us depressed, weaker, and more immoral than any other time in history. Society justifies the onset of these afflictions with the hope that further technological advancement will one day bring the opportunity to feel true happiness. But the dismal reality is that further technological development will only exasperate these issues to a higher extent. Humans were evolved to live amongst nature all day, this is in stark contrast to the modern era where the closest most people get to nature is the wallpaper of a beach that they have on their computer. This disconnect to our natural environment has had a disastrous impact on our society’s well-being.
The modern man’s lifestyle is more akin to a sloth who knows how to work a computer rather than the highly developed endurance runners we were born to be. The average man will wake up, have a breakfast of coffee or a fatty piece of bacon, hop in his car and drive to his workplace where he will then sit at a desk for eight hours straight. This kind of lifestyle is the prime cause of why the world is experiencing the sizable obesity epidemic that we are seeing today. Another cause is the high fat and sodium diet that so much of the world is accustomed to. Due to the industrialization of the food industry, companies found packing foods with simple sugars and sodium makes the production of the food cheaper, and the shelf life longer. The effects of this switch from whole foods to factory foods can be clearly seen in society today. Sixty years ago the average 20-39 year old American man weighed a healthy 166.3 pounds, nowadays the average 20-39 year old American male weighs 196.9 pounds(Healthline). Now, if this weight was made up of muscle it would be perfectly healthy, but studies indicate that the average body fat percentage for males is 28%, well into being considered overweight. This all can be traced into the rise of the processed food industry onset by the industrial revolution. Beyond affecting the working man’s health, the effect of the industrial revolution can most clearly be seen in today’s youth.
More and more teenagers report having feelings of anxiety and depression on a day to day basis. Research supports this claim. According to the Pew Research Center, the total number of teenagers who have recently experienced depression has increased 59% between the years of 2007 and 2017(Pew Res. Center). This is caused by the alienation they feel from social media, on top of the pressure that our youth experience deriving from their lack of goals, and guidance.
Social media has had a highly negative impact on our society. Instagram is a virtual highlight reel, where anyone scrolling is subjected to one’s happiest moments, specifically tailored to make it seem like their life is perfect. This constant subjection to other people’s highlight reels has the effect of making someone feel like their life is not worth living. The effect of this is that the person shells up their emotion in an attempt to make themselves seem happier to the world. This will only make the person more miserable, and ironically, more anti-social. Saying this, social media has had the opposite effect on society than intended. Social media was intended to be a way to connect with friends and family through photos and videos. It has now become a popularity contest, a platform to measure one’s value in the societal hierarchy. The reason that the application has not been used as intended, is that it is not designed to improve the users life. Rather, it is designed to be addictive, so that you never want to leave the hamster wheel of chasing more likes, followers, and comments.
The youth are more lost than ever. According to the U.S census bureau, 25% of children grow up without a father (National Fatherhood Initiative). The effects of this lack of guidance is startling. Studies have shown that teens that grow up without a father figure are twice as likely to drop out of high school, four times greater risk of poverty, and seven times more likely to become pregnant as a teen. This sudden onset of fatherless homes is no coincidence. The rise in bastards is directly tied to the industrialization of our society. As the job market has become more and more technical, the role of the man working a blue collar job has significantly decreased. Thus, society’s view on men has degraded as well. This has made men more infirm than ever, and with weaker men, comes feeble fathers.
The most disturbing part of this rise in depression is the effects it has on youth if these feelings persist. Teen suicide is up by nearly 60% according to the CDC. Additionally, teen suicide is now the second leading cause of death among ages 18-34. Now, what is the solution presented by industrial society? Antidepressants. Mankind has become so dejected with the current way of living that it has become necessary to make a pill to block out your true emotions.
Along with being more unhealthy and depressed than ever, humans are also now more immoral and Godless than ever. Humans are inherently believing creatures, so when you remove that moral compass, chaos insures. Pedophilia is on the rise, and pornography is the catalyst of it by brainwashing the men of today and desensitizing them to increasingly vulgar content. This has all been onset by the advancements made in the internet’s infrastructure. And of course, the suffering doesn’t end with the users, it most devastatingly affects the adolescence.
Pedophilia is on the rise and it is affecting today’s youth. Data from the Crimes Against Children Research Center show that in the US, 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys have been a victim of a sexual crime(NCVC). It has become such a widespread issue that some parts of the Western world are now accepting pedophilia as something that is normal. This mental sickness is a product of someone being totally morally bankrupt, and a prime indication that the sudden technological advancement has caused serious ailments in our society. The prime reason for this uptick in crimes against children is a direct result of the rise in production and ease of access to vulgar content on the internet.
Porn is the root of this rise of immorality today. It conditions males to seek increasingly degrading and wicked content. This can be seen in the fact that the majority of child predators were porn addicts before committing the actual act. The reason porn has such a negative effect on the human mind lies in how we are wired. Back in the days of running in the savannah with a spear males had to work to find a suitable mate. These days, you can fool your mind into believing you have an unlimited amount of mates at the tips of your fingers. The effects this has on the mind’s dopamine receptors is startling. As the dopamine receptors become desensitized, the person must look for a bigger hit of dopamine in the form of more and more reprehensible content. Worse yet, the pornography industry will only continue to grow and make more of this content to consume mindlessly. This is not how humans are supposed to live.
So as the world consumes more social media, porn, and synthetically designed pills to block how you perceive emotion, I ask, was it all worth it? The iPhone, the air conditioned house, are these fruits of industrial advancement worth the millions of lives that are now cast into a gloomy existence? The houses will never be big enough, the phones not smart enough, and the pills not strong enough.
As long as we continue to chase that utopia, the suffering will only increase.
