“THE AGE OF NEUROSIS”

This is not an article per se, nor is it a treatise, but more of diagnosis of what I would invigoratingly like to call “The Age of Neurosis”.

Is this a revolutionary diagnosis, one might ask, most probably not. The concept is neither ground-breaking or, scientific, nor was it conceived in an ivory tower in Cambridge in the United Kingdom, or in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was conceived in a location similar to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra’s, high up besides the Sun, 6000 feet beyond man and time.

Neurosis refers to an excessive and irrational anxiety and obsession, typically associated with individuals with certain mental health maladies. I think it would be befitting to invoke the famous Hungarian-American psychoanalyst, Thomas Szasz, and his idea of “The myth of mental illness”, and analyse the age of neurosis from this perspective.

If neurosis has very little to do with “a specific scientifically and chemically proven pathology” and everything to do with what Szasz astutely referred to as “the problem of living”, then perhaps that would be the defining feature of our era. It is no surprise that Stoic Philosophy has become as prominent as it has in recent times, not to discount its indelible significance through out the ages.

The absurd reality that there has been no widely known or acknowledged “Philosopher King” since Marcus Aurelius is also a feature of the age of neurosis. That is a period of 2000 years. This age is premised on the idea that technological advancement, as well as economic prosperity not known to any previous time in history, yet one wonders whether humanity is becoming any less anxious, and at the very most, any more content?.

The age of neurosis, as I have diagnosed it is characterized by five key things:

1. Technological Singularity
2. Embedded growth obligations and conspicuous consumption
3. Inequity and the meritocracy trap
4. Precarity accompanied by a disillusionment with democracy and politics
5. Incessant social pressure, envy, fear and status anxiety

These five characteristics are currently all in sync in some way or another, and they are the necessary and sufficient conditions key to the sustenance of contemporary neurosis. This is not an apocalyptic sentiment, but rather more like an invocation of catharsis, and the much needed revelation and compass for the uncertain future of mankind.