Excluding those people who are struggling over meeting the basic needs of survival (food, shelter, etc.), what do you think is the most common source of inner turmoil for human beings? What’s the one personal struggle that most people would be able to relate to by the time they are, let’s say, 50 years old?
I’m particularly interested in the perspectives of people who have experienced life in different cultures. Do Americans fret over the same things that other nationalities do? Do 20-somethings in outer Mongolia worry about being a “loser” for not having accomplished X, Y, or Z? Do people from cultures that promote arranged marriages worry they’ll never find “true” love? Do people who work in sweatshops ever talk about “burnout” or experience midlife crises?
Well, when you’re in a place where each and every day is a struggle to get the basic needs met, there’s not much time for philosophizing. Still, I’d say most people, at some time in their lives, struggle with the sense of coming to terms with the vastness of the universe. Whether it’s a positive emotion - “look at the beauty of the stars”, or “isn’t God great” - or negative - “Nothing I do matters because I’m so minuscule” - I think just comprehending that enormity is difficult. And it’s universal, because everyone, at some time or other, looks up at the night sky.
Just wanted to clear something up: There is no such place as “Outer Mongolia” anymore. It’s just “Mongolia”.
The most universal human struggle is for status*-- however that is defined in your particular society. We’re social primates, and social primates are all about status.
It’s been my experience it has been the strong oppress the weak and in every place where humans gather in large number it is always the struggle of the many weak to adapt or overcome the oppression of the few strong. Almost all great art that has stood the test of time has some aspect of this.
The exception to this is may be in Mennonite or Amish culture, but they are quite small.
This might be right, but the majority, if not vast majority, of people are religious. Most religions have an afterlife. Now, you can’t really calculate people’s fear of death because it depends on what they really, truly believe, but I’d be willing to bet that religion significantly eases any fear felt about mortality by the average human.
I think status, self esteem and identitiy are all closely related as it applies here. If I belonged to a village of 200 people I would have some status as a mechanic for instance. Even a Dr. has trouble really establishing some kind of status in his community.
The internet provides a unique service here, we can find small communities where we have some special skill that gives us status within that community. I think it helps to fill that void but possibly at the cost of other constructive things we might be doing.
Yep. Simple, and very very basic. Next thing on the Hierarchy after basic physical needs (food, shelter) and safety is love. The struggle to attract love, the struggle to remain in love and the struggle to believe in love.
Counselors in refugee camps often report that while they go there expecting to hear about the traumatizing atrocities of war, genocide, rape, starvation…mostly what they hear about is how someone’s man done her wrong by running off with her cousin’s best friend. It’s not that war/genocide/rape/starvation aren’t happening, and aren’t traumatic, it’s that the struggle for love is even more fundamentally, universally, of concern to humans.
I’d say meaning, which ties into a lot of others like religion. If you define it broadly enough, everyone has irrational beliefs and they stem from trying to find meaning I think.