Here and there one sees tendencies to scorn people who are truly feeling well, having it good and being happy Wikström thinks. The ones capable of sitting on a park sofa or bench enjoying life, being relaxed, whistling.
Contentment being in glaring contrast to the dissatisfaction’s culture building on something that all the time has to be taken care of because it isn’t good enough – it can be everything from body, home, partner, garden, kitchen or age – everything has to get through a make-over.
The conception that the human being isn’t good enough as she is has in itself become a profitable business concept. To begin with creating dissatisfaction first is the prerequisite for attracting us to buying different services or commodities which in turn shall cure the anxiety you have created in the first place.
Actually this is nothing new.
Everyday life isn’t a natural flow of things just happening, rolling on and passing further. Rather it’s about a lot of mini-projects. Those projects have to become prepared, then made and at last evaluated. There is often also a product or service said to solve the problem. This constant dwelling on different alternatives creates a longing for simple advices. Through those one is searching ways out from this/the age’s confusedness.
In the early 21st century it seems as it isn’t the body that is the problem. Rather it is the self-image that has become a problem. When the identity has become vague and floating, and most boundaries are rubbed out, it’s up to each one of us to form – or why not buy – a self-image (from where comes this diffuse self-image? Exploited and misused). Great psychological efforts are made to get oneself a clear(er) self-esteem via clothes, poses, journeys, styles, language, and gestures.
The shame that you aren’t happy leads to accusations of oneself, unless everything isn’t disguised in diffuse bodily symptoms. However, after all it is more accepted being burnout and stressed to pieces than being a failure (unsuccessful).
Endless needs for self-help books, with everything from Dr Phil, Wayne Dyer or “good old” Benjamin Spock. Through tangible advices the human being is offered easy ways (quick fixes) through the present age’s longing for the successful life. The self-help books offer the perfect illusion: that all everyday problems are solvable. And if people don’t become happy, fail etc. they accuse themselves (even more maybe).
What does this have with goodness to do? Maybe in this way: The amount of alternatives the human being is constantly exposed to – in purpose to making her/his life better – is making the strength left for people (being with them, caring for another person etc.) smaller and diminished. The human being has a certain amount of psychological energy at her/his disposal. If then big parts of the power she has is occupied with the time it takes pondering over the ocean of alternatives available and the choices she constantly has to make to maximize the “withdrawal” from this life, yes, then she gets less powers and strengths over for paying attention to other people and even less for helping.
And people who has nothing “to give”, people who are uninteresting or hard, those demanding attention or who are depressed, the ones disturbing one’s own time – those you aren’t able to manage or deal with.
Calling the self-realization as the most important norm in this era in question (or certain forms of it) is like swearing in the church. And yet; the anxiety is increasing, loneliness is increasing, many people seem not even to be present in their own lives, their gazes are shifting.
The self has become a project (not always to the best?). Adolescence is trying new identities. But the problem is that this construction of identity is never ended, it continues high up in ages. On top it demands more and more energy and has to become renegotiated constantly. My addition: you can wonder why we are so confused, what lies in the bottom. And it can be a good thing when people can develop (and change, within limits though too) all their lives too. But, as maybe a lot of other things, the focusing on oneself can become too much and unsound?
Wikström thinks the collective identity-generators have become made more and more suspicious. Everything collective is suspicious.
Then a lot depends/hinges on the individual’s own creativity and strength. And why are some more creative and strong than other people is my wonder?
Wikström thinks this is on good and bad. The confidence on the individual’s possibilities is enormous. A strong individualism linked to optimism certainly creates creativity and success in a few, the ones with strong personalities, who grew up in stable environments. Dandelion children (as we call them) have always been there, but their successes belong to the exceptions. And the talk about “being your own happiness’s blacksmith” (as we say) becomes cynical for the ones whose life is descended into a social room where class, gender or ethnic conditions constitute the main reason for ones misfortune or destitution.
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