Why all this?

My girls are stressed. They are worried about wild animals and poison ivy.  But they are four and five years old and they have just been able to realize that the world is full of danger, especially if they're away from Mommy or Daddy. It's a normal reaction.  They have found out that the world is full of difficulties, but that's never going to change.  The difficulties these two little girls face are ripples in the water compared to the waves that most of the children of the world have to deal with, but everything can look ominous when you're four.

What saddens me more is how much fear and stress so many adults seem to be carrying around, and I'm not talking about the folks who are risking their lives to find safety, fleeing from countries where governments and rebels kill everyone in their path.  I'm referring to people who are trying to earn a living, support a family, pay for college, plan for retirement, take care of a sick or old person -- all the things that happen in a life.

I've been reading the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. In the early part of the book he makes the point that the move from the life of the hunter/gatherer to the agricultural way of life was a big step for civilization, but not a good move for most of the people the vast majority were peasants and had to work the land as long as the sun was up.  A few nobles and royalty lived the life of leisure. Now, I can't say that I agree with this, as I have not interviewed too many hunter/ gatherers. The lives of some of the  adolescent street kids I see actually seem to depend upon many of the same skills that helped the survival of our very early ancestors, and the lives of these kids is certainly quite stressful, so I'm not sure I agree with him.

But the point is this, technological advances, whether it is the ability to harvest wheat, develop GMO crops, find directions with a GPS, or ask Siri how to make onion soup, are all ways that make life easier, but also have the unintended consequence of making life go faster, and thus making people more stressed.

One hundred years ago, when T.R. was president, he would work from 9 Am to noon.  He would send out letters and and wait two weeks to get an answer.  Now everything is instantaneous. The result is that people have to work all the time. If you open an email people expect an answer, immediately.  Now people won't read their emails.

Even fifty years ago most people worked 9 to 5, went home, had a cocktail, watched TV and went to bed.  Now people can work at home, but they also feel the pressure to be working 24 hours a day.

AND, since everything is running constantly, businesses have learned to charge on a subscription basis.  There are fewer things you own; that can be paid for once and that's it.  Every month we pay for cable TV, protective software, phones, cloud storage, data, software,.  Medical companies have caught on.  Drug companies have developed medicines we need to take a pill a week or every day for the rest of our lives.  Nothing is cured; we pay on subscription.  Oxygen tanks are rented, breathing machines are leased.

That means we have to keep on working to make the monthtly payments.  Even a mortgage had a 30 year limit. Iinternet, wireless and medicines go on for ever.

It's supposed to make us healthier, but it creates stress.

So don't worry, the coyotes who roam suburbia won't eat you, but the corporations, who are just there to make a living -- except for places like Volkswagen who knew they were cheating us-- will help keep the stress level high.  And stress corrupts our immune system, which makes us more vulnerable to depression, cancer, diabetes, and just plain irritable pissed-offedness, which stresses relationships.

I don't know if there is a way out, except all of my patients who are over seventy seem to have found the TV station that plays only shows that ran before 1972.  Gun Smoke, Mayberry, and Leave It to Beaver seem very reassuring as the antidote to stress.  Fox News brings on heart attacks.