>If there's anything to be gleaned from this study, my personal take is that pleasure seeking but spiritually lacking behavior (in this case, buying expensive sugary drinks very frequently) can correlate with depressive symptoms at a population level.
This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. Modern society is all about speed and convenience and entertainment, so people get used to craving something and getting it more or less immediately. We know sugar is addictive, and so is nicotine -- both are easily sated addictions and bring momentary comfort. Pile addictive social media on top and you have a population that is used to finding that next spark of joy/comfort/excitement immediately.
Buddhism posits that "life is suffering" so these moments of comfort can be understood to salve the suffering a bit so we can then go out and endure more suffering for the good of each other. But when those moments of comfort become minutes or hours of comfort, we are no longer struggling against the suffering as much as we are trying to hide from it. When those moments of comfort become the most important part of the day, we are not on the right path.
I fear this means that society on a broad scale is less durable than it used to be, which is why we have seen an increase in both suicide rates and escalating attacks between "opposed" groups. Toleration of groups which don't agree with you is a kind of suffering, yet this behavior is actively avoided due to the shallowness of social media interactions being taken to mean "interacting with someone = you agreeing with them" which leads to endless purity testing and spiraling relations between groups.
This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. Modern society is all about speed and convenience and entertainment, so people get used to craving something and getting it more or less immediately. We know sugar is addictive, and so is nicotine -- both are easily sated addictions and bring momentary comfort. Pile addictive social media on top and you have a population that is used to finding that next spark of joy/comfort/excitement immediately.
Buddhism posits that "life is suffering" so these moments of comfort can be understood to salve the suffering a bit so we can then go out and endure more suffering for the good of each other. But when those moments of comfort become minutes or hours of comfort, we are no longer struggling against the suffering as much as we are trying to hide from it. When those moments of comfort become the most important part of the day, we are not on the right path.
I fear this means that society on a broad scale is less durable than it used to be, which is why we have seen an increase in both suicide rates and escalating attacks between "opposed" groups. Toleration of groups which don't agree with you is a kind of suffering, yet this behavior is actively avoided due to the shallowness of social media interactions being taken to mean "interacting with someone = you agreeing with them" which leads to endless purity testing and spiraling relations between groups.