The rise of envy from social media and the rise of individualism are having downstream effects on how we view the people around us and what goals we set for ourselves. Always looking out for number one is good for us in some respects but can make us feel lonely and rudderless.

Books referenced - Generations by Jean Twenge, Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

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"The progressive among us want our society to be equal, and yet many of the selfsame people uncritically accept the notion of meritocracy, the idea that we should receive rewards consistent with our abilities. Meritocracy is a machine for creating inequality; that is its very purpose. Only the false god of "equality of opportunity" keeps the fiction of meritocracy plus equality alive." - deBoer

Bringing together different articles, books, opinion pieces, and other audio clips of people more gifted at speaking and writing than myself together and bundling them into one dissertation is something that I feel this podcast does well. And hopefully I encourage people who are interested in the topic to read or hear it from the experts for more information.

These four charts show how the SAT favors rich, educated families The Washington Post, 2014

How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition - Daniel Markovits, The Atlantic, 2019

The tyranny of merit - Michael Sandel, TED, 2020

Making Sense Podcast - Michael Sandel and Sam Harris

Books referenced - The Cult of Smart by Fredrik deBoer, Mortal Questions by Thomas Nagel

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Why aren't we happier? We don’t always do voluntary things for enjoyment. Leisure time is spent trying to be productive or trying to keep up with the Joneses. We let somebody else's goals become our goals. Not only that, but we usually aren't connected to the present moment when we do spend our time wisely.

Don't forget to think about what it is that you are trying to get out of life. What you're trying to get out of this moment of free time you have. We don't want to let an ad dictate what we consider to be entertaining. We don’t want social media algorithms dictating what we become interested in and to lead us down a rabbit hole. But, we do want to follow rabbit holes we are genuinely interested in. Rabbit holes that feed our curiosity, not our envy or our desire to fit in. We want to fall in love, to be obsessed with, to be engaged with what we’re doing.

"I cannot remember the books I have read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Alan Lightman's article from April 2020 - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-is-changing-habits-of-mind/609181/

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