22 Jul Insecurity Has Crippled Us As A Society

When people look back at the history books, I think they will see that insecurity was our downfall. Not your average “I feel nervous about doing something” insecurity, but the kind that infects the depths of your soul. The “I as a person am not good enough.” kind of insecurity. The “People hate me.” kind of insecurity. The “I’m not worthy of love.” kind of insecurity. That kind of insecurity is insidious and leads to adults with major emotional issues that are beyond difficult to resolve. Today, let’s chat about how these problems of insecurity are contributing to our society’s rapid implosion.

It Was Your Parent’s Fault

As with most emotional issues in people today, the first person I’m looking at are their parents. It’s your parents responsibility to instill love in you and raise a confident, well balanced adult ready to take on the world. For a good portion of the world, this obviously didn’t happen, and thus we have the situation we’re currently in. Instead of focusing on their main job of raising human beings, they instead gave their time and attention to their careers, shallow attention seeking behaviors, and material things they wanted to buy to keep up with the Jones. Their priorities were not their children and today’s society shows it.

Now to toss the parents a bone, you can’t give what you don’t have. Chances are their parents did the same thing and left them with no other blueprint for parenthood other than doing exactly what they are doing now. It’s a generational virus that each parent passes on, giving their children less and less of the support they need to grow properly. Insecure parents raising insecure kids that will in time bring up their own insecure devil spawn. Well at least we’re consistent.

Social Media Was The Tipping Point

I’ve been on social media since it’s beginning; we’re talking about before MySpace in the Xanga and AOL Instant Messenger days (I’m not old, I just have experience :). I will say this, social media was a whole different animal back then. It was fun, it connected you with your friends, and it had a positive effect on your relationships with those around you.

Social Media today is very different. It’s nothing more than a popularity contest, screaming match for your uninformed opinion, and endless scrolling to avoid reality or interacting with others. It has grown to become a cesspool of insecurity trapping people in a false world of ways to feel bad about yourself. A big reason for this started when companies and celebrities began marketing themselves on the platforms. It shifted from a way to connect with your friends to a way to profit off of other’s naivety and insecurities. As a person who has a marketing business, I can admit, marketing ruins everything.

Ego Is Insecurity Turned Outward

The funny thing about insecurity is that it can mask itself as ego. Ego is nothing more than insecurity turned outward to protect that person’s fragile inner psychological state. Both ego and insecurity are rooted in fear, and such a person is just scared. Scared they aren’t good enough, scared of being hurt, scared of being an outcast. The person can’t handle being rejected or not liked, so they portray a self image of more than they really are. It’s a psychological defense mechanism.

The problem with this approach is that it prevents you from growing and improving. Every perceived danger is an attack on who you are and met with puffing yourself up to the point that you can’t accept positive criticism that may have helped you become a better person. It’s the hard headed kid who the old timer tries to give advice to on how to use a hammer so they don’t hurt themselves building their bootleg skate ramp, and the kid promptly says “I know what I’m doing”, before nearly taking off his thumb. Insecurity displayed as ego is the epitome of “F Around Find Out”.

Enter Snowflake Syndrome

Let’s be real for a second, people are overly sensitive today to the point that it feels like you have to watch everything you say to a ridiculous degree. Not because what you’re saying is inappropriate, but because people can’t seem to handle any criticism, different opinions, or even the plain old truth. Just like hammer boy, they perceive it as an attack on their character. This just screams insecurity issues. Point out (out of love for growth) how someone else could improve in an area, and watch a snowflake melt.

This has penetrated work, relationships with friends, to even your own family at home. Everyone is on edge afraid of offending someone else or getting their feelings hurt. Here’s a cool reality, no one can hurt your feelings. Only YOU can let other people hurt your feelings. The only one in charge of your emotions is you. This seemed to be an obvious for older generations, but a foreign and blasphemous concept to the newer generations. In this regard, people need to toughen up a bit because 1. Life isn’t fair and 2. There is no growth without pain. A pillow padded world where everything is catered to not hurting your overly insecure feelings is not one that breeds strong, capable, mature adults. It’s time for the snowflakes to grow up.

The Domino Effect

Insecurity’s effect on society is a major problem because it produces humans who produce other similar humans. It’s like a source sickness with patient zero affecting their children, family members, friends, and that weird dancing guy at the end of your street. What starts as an internal issue soon has a major impact on your external environment. That is what we are seeing with the state of society today. Billions of people who have yet to mature emotionally acting out their personal issues on a daily basis and affecting society in real time. It’s like a setting a rabid bear loose in a luxury store. What was once beautiful and high value is now F’d up, expensive to fix, and a liability.

And to make things worse, problems surrounding insecurity don’t just fix themselves on their own. Instead, they compound every time they are ignored and then resurface later because Jimmy Jones at the end of the block just got a nicer car than you. These problems that may have just started as a small inconvenience soon explode into the breakdown of the social fabric with your community, friends, and even your own children. This is what we are witnessing today in real time.

The Fix

The fix for insecurity is simple; accepting who you are. You can’t be insecure about yourself when you are content with who you are as a person. But easier said than done. It takes serious commitment to acknowledging your personal issues and then forging through the fire to face your fears head on. It means facing who you really are and then learning to be happy with that; accepting your strengths and your weaknesses. It’s freeing yourself from the bondage of your soul, leaving the jail cell of fear behind. Give yourself the freedom to be who you are; that is the solution.

The purpose of this GI SAID IT blog is simple, to provide perspective. GI delivers this unique perspective in a style that is unapologetically honest, straight to the point, and at times a bit brutal. GI SAID IT: Brutally honest, no BS. Click for more GI SAID IT shows and articles.