> they've removed themselves from city comforts to live an intentionally different kind of life.

Like "savages" who reject their soma. (brave new world)

American culture has rotted. The communities that our parents grew up with (churches) have failed as an institution. Seeking community is a function that most of my peers (and myself) seem to have failed at, particularly in San Francisco. Being a very white guy born into a very white culture I always envied other people who seemed to have communities built around theirs. Probably a case of grass is greener.

I spent around a year vagabonding and I can say for certain that "wherever you go there you are" is completely 100% true and that while location change can help spur action and change, it's a spark that might be capable of starting a fire, but the fuel has to be there.

I definitely get that a sense of community and service could "jump" transmitters, but it still requires seeking behavior rather than escaping behavior so the bootstrapping problem remains.

I agree comfort is the opposite of growth. You can't grow without discomfort. One of the most important decisions in life is to choose the right pain. In many ways it is the pain a person chooses to suffer that separates and elevates them above others. There is clearly a difference between productive pain (going for a run) and unproductive pain (feeling lonely and depressed).

The larger problem is one of debt. As people live a life of escapism they accumulate debts. The opportunity cost of constantly escaping is high, and it builds up. Adventures not had, stories not made, relationships not had, languages not learned, weights not lifted, hiking trails not explored, work projects not done, resume not built/resume gap, communication skills left unpracticed, money left unearned, houses left unbought, money left uninvested. As you watch your personal value diminish or stagnate, your options similarly look more unpleasant. The idea of finding love dies, and the idea of finding a tolerable co-habitor starts to creep in.

When faced with the work required to "pay off debt" and the perception of meager rewards for doing so, darkness settles in. In some ways it becomes preferable to be crushed by the debt than face paying it off. The pressure to pay off debt creates equal pressure to escape those obligations and a person is faced with a very simple and dangerous choice. Do I want to live today or do I want to press the skip day button (drugs, reddit, games, tv, over-consumption of any sort). Every day skipped is another day deeper in debt and an investment in remaining depressed. It's a simple problem to solve (Choose discomfort, fake it til you make it), but a very hard path to walk, especially without a guiding light.

When you're in long relationships and things go badly, in a very literal sense, your body starts to learn that relationships are not a source of joy and pleasure, but an impending injury. Expectations become self fulfilling prophecies that reinforce the expectation of injury. When you have deep crashes at moments you feel high, it teaches your feeling brain (as opposed to thinking brain) to fear and dread the high. The positive feelings of anticipation you might have had when young become negative feelings of anticipation after negative experiences. Dopamine dries up. Once you no longer anticipate reward, how do you motivate paying off the debt? IMHO that is the puzzle of depression. Fighting depression requires work, but doing work requires belief of reward. The thinking brain understands this and knows the right path, but the feeling brain is in control. Wrestling the feeling brain into unlearning trauma isn't something I think most of us are able to do without professional help.

They say gratitude is a good practice and quite literally boosts your serotonin. ^^

This Stanford professor's podcast is super interesting: https://hubermanlab.com/

While this book is a bit dated, I found it an incredibly interesting perspective: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/378339.The_New_Toughn...

While the book was written for the purpose of becoming a better competitor/athlete, the content is much more broad in scope. One key idea from the book is that negative self talk is a manifestation of stress. Another key idea is that just like you can sprain an ankle and have a physical injury, it is entirely possible to over stress yourself and experience a mental injury that shares many of the same properties as a physical injury. The last chapter or two is a little woo woo, but the rest seems pretty solid.