Something else I can’t stop thinking about after watching The Secrets of the Blue Zones is that the very antithesis of long life appears to be the backbone of America.
That is the undying loyalty to the individual.
The Blue Zones highlight community, faith-based belonging, and family.
In America, the pursuit of individual happiness has become so prominent that people are willing to let marriages, family, and friendship fall apart without a second look. All in the name of individual desires and presumed happiness.
The overall sense I get from the present culture in the U.S. is an underlying belief that says, ‘So long as you’re following your truth and that truth isn’t hurting anyone else, rock on. Whatever you say goes. I’ll support you in doing you. Just leave me be so I can pursue my own version of happiness.’
How vague.
This sentiment makes me flashback to the 2016 Oxford word of the year ‘post-truth,’ an adjective that means objective reality has ceased to have a substantial impact on people’s perception of reality when compared to their own feelings and beliefs.
There are many issues with this.
Women on Women in an Individualistic Society
Let’s talk about a common discourse women have on women, insight of the individual.
I keep up with several influencers who are the girlfriends of professional sports players. The common critique these women receive is the idea that they are sellouts because they choose to travel with their significant others and act in a supporting role. These women give up where they live so they can travel around the country and be with their partner while he works in his chosen field.
The sellout critique is rooted in a critique that runs much deeper. That is, a woman who gives up something to play a supporting role is somehow not being true to herself or her individual desires. Therefore, she deserves criticism and online hate (mostly from other women, I might add). She is somehow seen as anti-woman. How dare she sacrifice where she lives for who she is with. How distasteful.
I find this particular critique of women in public relationships very common across the board. It takes different forms, but the central theme is the same. ‘Why is she making such drastic adjustments to her life for a relationship?’ This underlying belief has close ties to how prominent the individual’s desires have become in society.
No one mentions these influencers happen to get monetary benefits from traveling all the time. Constant travel offers ample opportunity for content. Creating interesting content is their job.
Furthermore, no one mentions the obvious. Relationships require each partner to give and take. To compromise and work through individual desires. Some compromises are more public, like in the example of where you live or the lifestyle you lead being based on a partner’s job, but make no mistake, relationships are full of compromises.
Two individuals coming together to act as one unit means a lot of things, but it most certainly does not mean one person maintaining all individual autonomy and the other giving up everything.
Marriage and Individualism
Another thing I’ve noticed is how the dedication to individualism and the belief that the individual is king above all else impacts marriage.
Entering Marriage
First off, marriage is often avoided until the last possible moment. That moment is typically in the sweet spot known as almost 30 or I-really-lived-up-the-single-life-but-I-think-I’ll-try-this-now age.
We are told to live our lives while we aren’t tied down and not to rush growing up. So much so that the age range of adolescence keeps expanding. The 20s are now seen as a time to not take life too seriously. Why? In the name of many things, but I’d also argue in the name of living wholly for self and individual desires for as long as possible.
This notion makes me think of a TED talk called ‘Why 30 is Not the New 20’. The psychiatrist giving the talk makes a series of points about how 20-somethings are wasting one of the best developmental decades of their life in the name of ‘I have plenty of time.’ And to be fair, people in their 20s are being encouraged to not take life too seriously by authority figures and adults in their lives.
She goes on to make the case that 20-somethings shouldn’t be trivialized, but instead encouraged to learn and develop as adults. To make moves to get identity capital vs. putting off entering a career or trying to find a real relationship until their 30s.
The other common approach is to avoid marriage in the legal and religious sense altogether. This approach is popular for many reasons. It is convenient. Low risk. Works on a whim and can be exited on a whim just the same. Living together works to sustain immediate comfort and companionship while leaving the door open to exit the relationship should that decision serve the individual more. Say, the compromises get too hard or someone better comes along.
Life within Marriage
A society obsessed with individual happiness results in a few notable outcomes when it comes to life within a marriage.
First, it feels like more so than ever, people are being as individualistic as they possibly can within marriage. This is obviously not always the case, but when it comes to making trips apart from your spouse, getting into separate hobbies, doing your own thing, etc. the collective fully condones it without question and even overtly encourages it.
This is a tough subject to explain.
I’m not at all saying you can never go on a solo trip or have a hobby or something that you do just for yourself within a marriage. I am saying that we may need to stop and have a healthy bit of internal consideration regarding such things. Because a trip is one thing, a repeated lifestyle of each spouse choosing to spend money and time apart from each other can quickly become living a separate life altogether. We become roommates more than life partners.
In a climate that applauds separateness in the name of individual happiness, we can easily find ourselves rationalizing things and making exceptions for things that maybe should be considered more closely.
Second, we have the matter of what constitutes a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to exiting a marriage. The divorce statistics are at an all-time high and increasing still. This is no secret.
Unfortunately, there are ample examples of divorce in our society. And the unfortunate reality is many marriages end because of irreconcilable differences. A reason that is essentially a blank check for getting out of marital vows. Why are we exchanging vows if we don’t really mean it?
Leaving a marriage in the name of individual happiness has become doctrine. This is a belief that runs very, very deep in our culture. So much so that when young people run scenarios and talk about marriage, there is this overt stance that says all bets are off and they’d leave in a minute should their partner do something to significantly hinder their happiness. Instead of exchanging traditional vows, maybe we should start saying what we really mean.
Individualism and Family
Now about children. The discourse on children is an interesting one. In a society that overwhelmingly highlights individual happiness, there are many different takes on having a child.
It is honestly a charged topic. And rightfully so. People make all sorts of misplaced assumptions and have opinions about women who choose to have children or choose not to have children. They also have plenty of opinions and thoughts about why a woman hasn’t had a child yet. In the realm of starting a family, it seems everyone has an opinion.
An interesting phenomenon for such a personal topic.
There’s no way to categorize all the lines of thought on having a child. The ideas are wide and varied. It is accurate to say that it is something universally felt and considered, though. In addition, it is something that causes quite a unique shift in the individual lives who do or can, choose to have children.
The thought of having a child awakens a deep and uncanny fear in the individual. Fear of the unknown. Fear of how freedoms will be impacted. Fear of losing self and losing the very individual we have fought to identify, take care of, and appease for all these years. Fear of losing individualism is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to considering ‘starting a family’.
Almost as a result of the previous notes on marriage and extended adolescence, we have the subject of how common it is to wait to have children if that desire is indeed a desire. Marriages or long-term relationships start later and later. And as a complimentary statistic, so do the introduction of children. Currently, the median age range for giving birth in the U.S. is 30. This is for a multitude of reasons. Marriage later in life. Career goals and financial stability. Having fun and being untethered for as long as possible.
Is it Selfish to Have a Child?
On one hand, you have the known fact that good parenting is one of the most selfless, self-sacrificing things a person can do (provided the person is a good parent). The decision demands untold amounts of time, energy, love, and money.
On the other hand, we have the philosophical approach of pseudo-intellectuals who believe having a child is actually quite a selfish choice. Why bring a child into a world that can’t sustain more people from an environmental standpoint? A world so fraught with evil? Why not give the money and time you’d spend on raising a child to the other billions of children on the planet in poverty?
The virtue signaling doesn’t stop there.
The other claim is one that highlights the role of the individual. That is, the choice to have a child is inherently selfish because people make that choice to achieve maximum self-fulfillment. The choice to bring a child into the world is diluted by the notion that the driving factor is individual pleasure.
This claim may have more credibility at first glance, especially if you live in a world where the individual truly is king above all else with nothing to question or check his or her reign. Those with a religious background who believe a just and holy God is king above all else, have a different perspective. The oft-quoted dominion mandate in Genesis is one reason obedience might be an answer to the question of why choose to have children. Interestingly, this mandate includes a clause about replenishing the earth. That is, it isn’t a blanket statement regardless of the rest of creation. It is one that speaks to restoration and careful stewardship.
After reading a couple of articles on the topic of how selfish it is to choose to have children, I must note that the claim distinguishes the decision to have a child as selfish, not the act of parenting. That’s important to note. Second, this stance itself is admittedly rooted in a multitude of individual and selfish reasons. One of the authors herself admits those who don’t want to have children may choose to do so for environmental reasons (and claim the moral high ground in doing so), but they also choose that route to afford themselves a “better”, more well-off, and arguably more peaceful life.
The conclusion leads readers to believe the thesis is really about deflecting the accusation of living a selfish life, rather than providing substantial evidence to promote the idea that it is indeed selfish to have a child.
Food for Thought
We’ve touched on quite a few topics. There are many rabbit trails and nuanced claims that most assuredly have not been adequately defended or communicated.
Nevertheless, this post was about voicing some things I’ve noticed about society in the U.S. These thoughts are familiar to my mind, but it was the juxtaposition of the cultural realities in the U.S. and the community element in the Blue Zones documentary that helped put things into words.
The docuseries on longevity showed that areas with the longest and best health spans were those that highlighted community and familial closeness. We didn’t touch on dying and individualism, but really that topic is the driving thought behind this whole brain dump. Those who live with or very near to family live much better, healthier lives compared to those put in elderly homes, where it is more common to have fewer meaningful connections and isolation is a constant and real threat.
As someone who is introverted and decidedly okay with being alone for extended periods of time, I have to catch myself from diving too deep into the self-centered and self-serving pillars of hyper-individualism.
Challenging how we view ourselves and our individual happiness is a worthwhile exercise. It is something I’ve been considering as I notice things within the cultural climate around me and as a result notice my own undying dedication to individual happiness.
Obviously, taking care of self and individual desires is valid and necessary. I don’t think there is any shortage of that belief. I would instead argue that it is the balancing thought of being more concerned with others that we need to spend more time pondering and acting on.
