Feel depressed? Take a pill.
Hungry? Order a pizza or a hamburger.
Bored? Go on Netflix.
Want to escape? Read a bestselling novel.
Having an existential crisis? Try this podcast or this self-help book.
In today’s world, there’s a solution for everything. Near at hand. Effortless. Immediate.
We live in the Era of Instant Gratification.
We live in an age of pills that “cure” everything: depression, fatigue, insomnia, overweight, sexual impotence … We call “depression” an ailment like it’s a flu, and take a pill to get rid of it, without it crossing our minds that its causes lie in our whole life and the cure comes with understanding and with lifestyle changes. We feel an existential void or a vague feeling of “boredom,” and instead of examining our life at a deeper level and meditating on the why of it all, we switch on the TV and binge a series for eight hours, disconnecting with the real world and entering an imaginary one. Alternatively, we start scrolling short videos on TikTok or YouTube, jumping aimlessly from one theme to another, succumbing to the digital algorithms that have figured out how to maximize our “engagement” so that they can serve us more ads.