Technology increasingly influences people in terms of opinions, values and behaviour. Our time has shrunk and we have little time and less patience to others. Personal contacts are shallower and more cybernetic. We are also getting more and more busy. Everything in life has become a task. We have tons of things to be done and they are so awful demanding! The pressures of the internet, the media and the infamous advisory services with their impersonal, normative and moral discourses make our lives some times frustranting.
We are so urged to make our activities useful, efficient, healthly and enjoyable that we lose the notion that the results of our efforts are little dependent on ourselves. We get easily frustrated at every "sub-optimal" result we obtain, which leads us, through some experiencies, to frustration ,at first, and then, to depression or dysthymia.
The work environment, for example, the place where overwork, personal conflicts, boredom and lack of prospect appear all the time. We can deal with these things for a time, some can do it longer than others, but add to them the company list of expectations with regard to you. Think about the subliminal claims of your boss and colleagues. Also, guess what if you don't get the proper achievement they impel you to attain. Do you control all of them ? Half ? Little ? None ?
And what about the search for the perfect body, which has little to do with health and more with vanity ? Although diseases such as hypertension, diabetes or dyslipidemia reach many more obese individuals, "normal" weight persons also does not mean being free of these ailments.
Or the quest of the "right diet", which is based on decades of shifting and misleading conflicts of dietary advice ?* Let's think about vegans and gluten-free food eaters, for example. Their diet will heal everything that bothers you and make you a better person. In fact, such ascription of moral eating and food, along with social media pressures ended up in a new disorder: orthorexia.
So many duties, so much concern to hit, so much concern in high performance leads us to a politically correct, boring and melancholy life.
We pursue goals that are subliminally imposed upon us through the control of media discussions. No surprise, psychologist's offices are bursting, and the self-help multi-billion industry is doing very well.
* This happens because the researchs are almost always short-term investigations. They are not scientifically strong enough to prove anything. They only produce hypotheses for future investigations. Notwithstanding, the economy and business around healthy life sell them as definitive scientific research (as if such a thing existed).
