Dense living

I don’t know many people that believe Western society is generally on the right path culturally. I sure don’t.

Yes, yes. Every generation thinks that their successors are low-life hippies. I get it. I’m not blaming Gen Z or anything like that. I’m talking about all of us. You and I included.

Here, I’m not speculating as to root causes of our cultural decline. I’m trying to more clearly pinpoint how I believe the problem manifests itself today.

The best way I can describe what has happened is that we as individuals trade density for expedience in every area of life. Let me give a few examples, from most tangible to the more abstract.

Let’s look at nutrition. In the last 50 years or so, we have dramatically increased our intake of sugary foods and cheap seed oils, while simultaneously reducing (and vilifying) our intake of nutrient-dense foods like beef. My family is already laughing at this because, go figure, the carnivore of the family would start building his case around diet.

We are getting fatter and less healthy and require more and more health care. That, to me, is a sign of making the wrong choices in our daily lives.

Let’s talk about exercise. First, most people don’t move or exercise near enough. But let’s set that point aside for now.

Most people that do exercise scour the web for hacks – cold showers, supplements, or gimmicky equipment – while neglecting the fundamentals. “Hacks” yield only nominal results that will go completely unnoticed if you don’t eat a nutrient-dense diet, hit the squat rack, get lots of sun exposure, and sleep well. 

This isn’t 80/20 stuff. It’s 99/1. But drinking mushroom coffee and popping weight loss pills is easier than the protocols that actually work.

Entertainment is another category where we neglect density. We spend time on social media, countless TV shows, and playing video games to keep us amused. Whatever happened to regularly spending our evenings in the company of friends and family? There are games to be played, conversations to be had, and relationships to enjoy. We settle for so much less. 

Speaking of relationships. We text, we DM, we comment, we like, and we chat, but we rarely engage.

We are missing a depth with friends and family that we truly need. The relational density of what I sense used to be is no longer. Relationships were never intended to happen any way but in-person; until maybe the telegraph, families were “forced” to live in close proximity if they wanted to stay engaged with one another. Only recently has it become possible, convenient, and expedient for us have “friends,” rather than friends.

We have neglected dense living in every aspect of our lives. It is a shame, because I doubt that many unhealthy, social-media addicted, relationally-impoverished people reach the end of their lives happy or fulfilled.

I get it. There is a reason that most people would rather eat Oreos than ground beef and vegetables, or watch Netflix every night instead of take time to host a group of people. The instant gratification and dopamine hit are hard to beat in the short-term.

But if we choose density in our lives instead of expedience over and over with intentionality, perhaps eventually we’ll reclaim an appreciation for what matters most.