<story><title>You Don&apos;t Need More Resilience. You Need Friends. and Money</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-09/what-you-ve-heard-about-resilience-is-probably-wrong</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wins32767</author><text>I can&amp;#x27;t imagine that many people in the rich countries in the modern era are among the most stressed humans in history, even despite the erosion of social support networks.  Nearly everyone has adequate shelter, food, security, and access to virtually magical health care from the perspective of everyone before 70 years ago.  Children consistently make it into adulthood and famine has been kept at bay for a century or more, interpersonal violence is at an all time low.  If in the midst of this unparalleled prosperity and wonder we&amp;#x27;re just as stressed as a peasant farmer who just lost half their family to disease, war and famine then something is badly wrong with how we handle stress.</text></item><item><author>spaniard89277</author><text>Stress is neccessary to grow and even to keep going, I&amp;#x27;m with you in that. But I think the article is right in pointing out that there&amp;#x27;s too much focus into some inner force that makes you accomplish everything.&lt;p&gt;This has been going for a while, and coupled with other factors, I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s paying good dividends. I think that everyone paying attention can see the steep increase in depression and medication. It&amp;#x27;s not only the US, it&amp;#x27;s happening in Europe too.&lt;p&gt;My impression is that we&amp;#x27;re removing people from their support networks, manufacturing lonely individuals, and eroding their financial float line through housing.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think mental thoughness or resilience can overcome this for too long, and many people is exposed to this stressors for many, many years, if not their entire life.&lt;p&gt;Even Taleb, who is really tiresome talking about stress, recognizes that stress is only useful if it is more or less bounded.</text></item><item><author>wins32767</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s unfortunate that the article downplays resilience so much.  It&amp;#x27;s entirely true that you can control your level of stress by making different choices, but for a given level of stress you can definitely improve how you handle it.  The best way to learn is guided practice under stressful conditions, speaking from personal experience.&lt;p&gt;Organizing society to minimize harm is an understandable impulse, but it&amp;#x27;s really harmful to people&amp;#x27;s ability to cope when difficult to avoid or unavoidable stressors hit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>poulsbohemian</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s another perspective... it isn&amp;#x27;t just about how we handle stress, it&amp;#x27;s about the causes of stress...&lt;p&gt;In her 90s, my grandmother said to me &amp;quot;Your generation has far more money than we had, but we were happier and had less stress.&amp;quot; She grew up in a just slightly more than a subsistence level farm family, then with my grandfather achieved just enough farming success to send the next generation to college. She travelled away from home just a few times in life, but as she said - it was a generally low-stress life.&lt;p&gt;Modern life on the other hand often starts the day with an utterly toxic commute. When we eat, it&amp;#x27;s often while working at our desk. Our housing costs are far above what was historically considered a safe % of income. We take almost no vacation and when we do, we take our laptop and phone with us. Even if we have health insurance, it is often very challenging to actually get preventative care.&lt;p&gt;I could go on and on, but my point is - modern life is stressful in completely different ways than the stressed encountered by the historical &amp;quot;peasant farmer.&amp;quot; His stress involved things he might be able to do something about, like storing up grain for winter or reinforcing his dwelling. Our modern stress is far more obtuse and difficult to control, like the Fed raising rates or Congress introducing a rider on a bill that wipes out a tax credit that was the only thing keeping us profitable.</text></comment>
<story><title>You Don&apos;t Need More Resilience. You Need Friends. and Money</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-09/what-you-ve-heard-about-resilience-is-probably-wrong</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wins32767</author><text>I can&amp;#x27;t imagine that many people in the rich countries in the modern era are among the most stressed humans in history, even despite the erosion of social support networks.  Nearly everyone has adequate shelter, food, security, and access to virtually magical health care from the perspective of everyone before 70 years ago.  Children consistently make it into adulthood and famine has been kept at bay for a century or more, interpersonal violence is at an all time low.  If in the midst of this unparalleled prosperity and wonder we&amp;#x27;re just as stressed as a peasant farmer who just lost half their family to disease, war and famine then something is badly wrong with how we handle stress.</text></item><item><author>spaniard89277</author><text>Stress is neccessary to grow and even to keep going, I&amp;#x27;m with you in that. But I think the article is right in pointing out that there&amp;#x27;s too much focus into some inner force that makes you accomplish everything.&lt;p&gt;This has been going for a while, and coupled with other factors, I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s paying good dividends. I think that everyone paying attention can see the steep increase in depression and medication. It&amp;#x27;s not only the US, it&amp;#x27;s happening in Europe too.&lt;p&gt;My impression is that we&amp;#x27;re removing people from their support networks, manufacturing lonely individuals, and eroding their financial float line through housing.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think mental thoughness or resilience can overcome this for too long, and many people is exposed to this stressors for many, many years, if not their entire life.&lt;p&gt;Even Taleb, who is really tiresome talking about stress, recognizes that stress is only useful if it is more or less bounded.</text></item><item><author>wins32767</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s unfortunate that the article downplays resilience so much.  It&amp;#x27;s entirely true that you can control your level of stress by making different choices, but for a given level of stress you can definitely improve how you handle it.  The best way to learn is guided practice under stressful conditions, speaking from personal experience.&lt;p&gt;Organizing society to minimize harm is an understandable impulse, but it&amp;#x27;s really harmful to people&amp;#x27;s ability to cope when difficult to avoid or unavoidable stressors hit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>a_cardboard_box</author><text>Stress is subjective. It doesn&amp;#x27;t have to align with objective measures. Evolution has selected for stress to work to favor survival in a certain environment, but we&amp;#x27;re no longer in that environment. If we needed support networks in the past, then we should expect to be unhappy without them, regardless of how important they are to survival in the present.</text></comment>