<story><title>Americans Are Among the Most Stressed People in the World, Poll Finds</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/americans-stressful.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maxxxxx</author><text>From casual observation (living here since 2000) I believe that being stressed and &amp;quot;busy&amp;quot; is a badge of honor in the US. For example during Christmas time everybody complains about being stressed with it. I don&amp;#x27;t remember that from living in Germany. Christmas was downtime not a source of stress.&lt;p&gt;For a while it was also popular to be &amp;quot;outraged&amp;quot; about stuff but that seems to have calmed down quite a bit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bpyne</author><text>Good observation. Not being busy is seen as being lazy in the US. Not working 10 hour days and commuting a couple of hours daily is seen as not being invested in your career. Not running your kids to two activities per night and all-weekend athletic tournaments is seen as being a bad parent. Then we spend money on stuff we don&amp;#x27;t need as a reward for being so productive, such a good employee, and such a good parent.&lt;p&gt;My daughter decided to stop playing Spring basketball, which entailed two 1.5 hour practices during the week and four games a weekend with travel involved. She made the very mature decision that she didn&amp;#x27;t want to sacrifice free time and friends to play a game. At first I was skeptical about her having so much downtime, but she&amp;#x27;s happier, doing better in school, and has a tight-knit group of friends. I&amp;#x27;m enjoying it quite a bit too since I don&amp;#x27;t have to rush from work to drive her around and have every weekend tied up for months.&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling a counter-cultural movement is going to start. Maybe not yet, but soon.</text></comment>
<story><title>Americans Are Among the Most Stressed People in the World, Poll Finds</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/americans-stressful.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maxxxxx</author><text>From casual observation (living here since 2000) I believe that being stressed and &amp;quot;busy&amp;quot; is a badge of honor in the US. For example during Christmas time everybody complains about being stressed with it. I don&amp;#x27;t remember that from living in Germany. Christmas was downtime not a source of stress.&lt;p&gt;For a while it was also popular to be &amp;quot;outraged&amp;quot; about stuff but that seems to have calmed down quite a bit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Zenst</author><text>People through history have always had an outraged culture, it is just that the goalposts of that outrage move, and occasionally rear up en-madd like a tidal wave over what for many is innocuous unless edge-case contextualized - which is often the case in outrage cultures.&lt;p&gt;There was a time in which people would be outraged at other people not wearing a hat, times change, yet the ability to be upset and project that upon others soldiers on regardless.  Just today&amp;#x27;s outrage culture has a more accessible platform to artificially embellish their outrage and societies ability to see 1% vocaly upset with outrage and presume the other 99% agree is a path that sadly still plays out from time to time.&lt;p&gt;But let&amp;#x27;s not confuse outraged issues with real issues that don&amp;#x27;t need to be blown up out of proportions to gain attention.   That is the worrying issue today, that so many times a small event gets recontextualized to fulfil a narrative of outrage and promoted as such.  Downing out real issues that fester without vocal champions.</text></comment>