US Life Expectancy Down

According to the CDC, the life expectancy in the United States is going down. That's not supposed to happen in advanced industrialized countries. What's truly disturbing is that drug overdoses and suicide are major factors.

It's a sign that our society is not a happy nor a healthy one. People who's lives have meaning do not kill themselves, nor seek escape in drugs. There's a classic experiment. Rats were given the opportunity to self administer drugs. Soon they were using drugs to the exclusion of everything else until they died. That study was held up to demonstrate the powerful attraction of drugs.

However, there was a recent study similar to the first, but with a critical difference. The rats were put in an environment that was stimulating and interesting. These rats did not drug themselves to death. Turns out rats only drudged themselves to death when stuck in a boring cage with nothing to do.

My theory is that our society has become a boring cage for too many people. Let's face it, vast numbers of people don't have anything interesting to do. They have crappy jobs that don't mean anything. David Graeber has written a new book called Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. He points out that many people are working needless jobs -and they know it. People have a need to be valuable and useful.

We have a society that just doesn't work for a large percentage of our population. That's not good. People have no hope. That's can't go on forever. We could continue to make a slow swirl down the drain. On the other hand, societies with no direction are vulnerable to charismatic leaders who promise meaning. That's how ISIS gets willing suicide bombers.

Interesting times.

-Sixbears