This has been bothering me for a while. For context, I was born in the U.S. but raised in South America. I grew up quite comfortably (middle class to upper-middle class). Nevertheless, it's quite difficult to ignore the degree of poverty and social desolation present where I was raised. I've now moved back to the U.S. and begun college. I'm fortunate enough to have my living costs and tuition covered for the next four years. If all goes well, I will go to law school and at worst live a comfortably mediocre middle class New England life. At best I'll earn more than ten times what the average global citizen earns.

I was depressed and recently went on happy pills. One of the things that struck me as most odd, is that I seemed to be especially miserable, despite being relatively wealthy and enjoying a frankly incredible quality of life. I noticed the same in my peers, my professors, and my co-workers.

How is this possible? If you live in Europe or North America (except Mexico, (lo siento)) you will probably live in greater comfort and wealth than the billions of people that preceded you in time. Dopamine from sexual arousal, food, and shelter, all at the flick of the thumb. Workplaces in which the most arduous task amounts to sending an (AI-generated) email. We have it better than anyone else in the history of man and yet we're all itching to kill ourselves. I'm not just writing this post to add onto the 21st century existential crisis pile, though. I have something of a half-baked idea as to why this is.

We like to think that our world operates consequentially. If I work hard and use my wits, I will be successful. This maxim, coupled with the ideal of meritocracy, is arguably the backbone of our philosophy toward distributive justice. Not treading new ground here, mind you. The American Dream has been analyzed to death at this point. If you wanted to throw some evolutionary biology in the mix just for fun, think about the dopamine reward mechanisms we developed in order to incentivize hunting.

The issue comes when we no longer feel a challenge. There are legions of men and women being spat out from the dinkiest state colleges to the $80k p/a private colleges, all of whom will most likely land on their feet and enjoy unparalleled quality of life. If that is the case, how do I know that what I've achieved is the result of my own labor? I'm forced to face the fact that where I've ended up: my job, my education, my relationships, are all a result of some type of cosmic lottery (i.e. a U.S passport.)

You can then extend this same logic to your heart's content: even if you took a hundred APs & extracurriculars, or practiced free throws a hundred times, you never chose which school district you were born in nor how fine your motor skills would be. The "striving" work ethic that built this level of comfort has come to inadvertently poison it. I should clarify that this is my own viewpoint, which I'm admittedly extrapolating along with a few logical leaps.

If you have any ideas more coherent than mine please tell me. I know it's not a great point, but I'm not sure how to express it entirely.