We accept our freedom, but at what cost?

Existentialists emphasized that we live our lives through our choices. It is refreshing to consider the freedom we have to create all kinds of life we ​​desire. But at the same time, this view that our lives are up to us makes our choices far more important. Soren Kierkegaard said, recognizing the anguish that comes with the recognition that we are responsible for charting our paths in life.anxiety It’s dizzy of freedom. “Every life decision we are making bold moves forward. wise choice.

Costly Freedom in Adolescents

Among them puberty And people are usually young adults who make many of the most consequential decisions of their lives. Their whole future is spread out before them, people need to act to choose the path to advance, they need to find their schooling, their kind of things Career the goalfind a partner to live. As if making such widespread decisions isn’t difficult enough, young people make them when most people are still trying to understand themselves. Given all the things that are at risk for youth, it’s not surprising that this is typically a very difficult life. Stanley Hall said, “The Storm and stress. ” Just as young people act against authority figures and engage in more dangerous behaviour than any other stage of life, it is between the ages of 14 and 21 that antisocial and violent behavior peaks with substance use.

One way to see the costs associated with our freedom is to see what it is like where people have fewer options. Research shows that adolescence does not bring about the same problem in all societies. One analysis of over 100 traditional small-scale societies found that in most of them people did not expect adolescents to be more antisocial or more aggressive (1). The storms and stress seen in the West are rarely present in these cultures. If everyone lives in a society where farming, then you don’t need to rack your brain to understand what you do in your life: you become a farmer.

It is extremely difficult where young adults face the vast number of potential roles to choose from among their adolescence. And this period of experimenting with potential roles continues to grow longer in the United States, where the life stage of “emerging adulthood” continues to last until the age of 30 (2). This tends to be an especially uneasy time, with more people suffering from anxiety disorders more than other stages of life (3). Many role selection is often combined with some crippling anxiety.

When everything is a choice

Comparisons between the United States and medieval Europe in the 21st century highlight some seismic cultural changes in the landscape of choice. In most medieval Europe, it was common for people to inherit the occupation of their parents, and it was relatively rare for people to try and infiltrate new jobs. Also, people didn’t say much about who they were married to, as marriages are more common. People usually did not actually choose the religion they practiced. In general, people were born into religion and never seriously considered alternatives. And people usually remained in the same community where they were born, so they didn’t have much about where they lived. The paths of life that people should follow were largely laid out before them, with few points in which alternative paths could be considered along the way.

But today, especially in the United States, it is difficult to find central aspects of the lives of people who are not subject to their own choices. The characteristics assigned to people by the community must be chosen by the individual themselves. People today need to understand how they sculpt themselves, but that has become much more complicated. For example, pursuing a career is much more difficult because of how many fluid career opportunities there are. The 21st century is characterized as having a gig economy, with many gathering several temporary employment lines to earn a living. Finding a romantic partner is usually done through Date The app, and the process, unlike flipping through catalogs with thousands of options, somehow people are expected to find the best one for them.

Having the freedom to choose has become a characterised by many people spiritual experience. Approximately 42% of American adults have different religious affiliations than they did. Childhood (4), and one of the fastest growing religious categories isNot spiritual, not religious. “This generally involves bespoke sampling from many different faiths and mystical traditions, perhaps combining Zen, combining several pagan rituals. meditation Techniques, yoga exercises, astrology table. People are increasingly choosing for themselves how to grasp the right path to the future, which adds a dimension of the universe to their personal responsibility.

In contrast to the past, there are very few aspects of life where people can expect to be fixed and pre-determined. sex. Many freedoms that Americans enjoy today are rare in the context of human history. America is the most individualistic country in the world today, and is gradually becoming more and more gradual as it celebrates the degree of personal freedom that is almost inconsistent with nowhere else. Perhaps there was no previous culture that had as much freedom as 21st century Americans. Therefore, Americans work as guinea pigs about how well humans can live their lives with so much freedom. We need to consider how people can best embrace all of their freedoms without succumbing to the anxiety that they come.

Check out my new book for more information on challenges combined with our freedom. What makes sense: How existential psychology helps us build meaningful lives in absurd times.