I want to tell you why you are discontent. I want to tell you how to overcome your discontent every day.

The reason for your unhappiness is that you aren’t being yourself. If you were being yourself as you were created by millions of years of evolution, you would settle into a life of caring for others.

As evolution shaped us, we are herd animals. We care for one another the way a herd animal protects its members. When they are aware of an attack, for example, bison form a circle with the calves and weaker members at the center. It is natural for them, and it is natural for us to take care of one another.

Left to themselves, children are the same way. They strive for fairness among themselves. I know this because I had a private school where children were largely left to their natural inclinations rather than being pitted against one another for grades and encouragement as they are in other schools.

But the children in most schools and the adults in capitalist society are pitted against one another. The only way for anybody to advance under capitalism is to climb over others. Alienation is forced on us, and alienation is the source of our discontent.

We know about this alienation. We usually experience it as guilt. Every day in every city, we walk by or drive by the suffering victims at the bottom of our capitalist fight among ourselves. Sometimes we give them a dime or a dollar, but it doesn’t seem enough.

What About Your Exes?

Alienation makes us desperate, and that is why we cling to the one person that capitalist society allows us to have – our spouse or significant other. It’s also the reason that so many of our relationships fail. We cling too hard, or maybe the other person clings too hard.

We cling desperately to that one person because we are alienated from virtually everybody else, and we doom the relationship because no one person can fill our void of alienation.

Some people try to fill the void with their children. These are the stage mothers and helicopter parents who, again, are often undone in their ambitions because they tried too desperately.

We Need to Do More

Recognizing your true need to care for other humans is the way to overcome your alienation and your discontent. We aren’t bisons, of course, so we are called upon to do considerably more than form circles around our calves.

Knee-jerk charity is also insufficient. Should you stop every time you see a homeless person and try to meet their true needs? Should you buy them new clothes, find them a job, or rent an apartment for them? How many could you help? Should you aspire to religious poverty and try to become the next Buddha? A few people try that, but more of them try it for only a while.

Strive to Care Effectively

We are herd animals like bison, but we are also thinking animals. If we seriously and honestly want to stop human suffering, then we have to think about the reasons for it. After that, we have to apply ourselves to resolving those reasons. That is the road to contentment and the way to stop being simply a victim of alienation.

It may be simple, but it’s not easy.  It doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize that the people at the bottom of this alienated heap have counterparts at the top. Elon Musk, for example, has more wealth than 53% of American households! They are the ones benefiting from this awful system and the ones who will fight you to continue it.

Follow the Good Examples

Look among your friends and acquaintances for those who are older and have maintained their sense of humanity. I don’t mean the churlish and cruel older people who make up stereotypes of discontent. I mean the older people who are still smiling at life.

You will find them among the activist population. The happiest old people I ever met were those who were still in the struggle. I never met an unhappy old communist.

It’s a Fight, but It’s Worth It

You can’t be content while you’re being oppressed.

It was really hard for me to accept a life of struggle. I think I tried everything that looked easier before I gave in to the obvious.

During the “Pop Psychology” days of the 1960s and 1970s, the key word for everybody was “adjust.” “I’ve adjusted” generally meant the same thing as “I’m happy” or “I’m content.” A “well-adjusted” person was someone who had it made. If someone (me) wasn’t happy, he/she wasn’t fully “in sync with his/herself” and needed to “adjust.” There were all kinds of elaborate ways to help people get adjusted, and most of them involved long expensive therapy sessions. Some involved massage, some involved heavy sedation, some involved electric shock, some involved brain surgery.

I never met a therapist who didn’t subscribe to this “adjustment” business. To that extent, they are agents of the status quo. Maybe all of them aren’t, but then I’ve not met them all.

Why Adjust?

But why should we adjust to an unfair world? Why should we adjust when we ourselves are being oppressed, and we can see a lot more oppression on other people? Why should we adjust when we could make things better?

There is precious little peace for anyone in our society. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our lives,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Actually, most of the world’s population doesn’t have enough for the bare necessities and spend their days searching for subsistence. Half the world’s children don’t have enough to eat. People are currently being incinerated by bombs paid for by American taxes.

Most of the people who do have enough can’t stop driving to accumulate more. Their children often become degenerate spendthrifts. Are any of them content?

The Only Possible Peace Comes from Fighting

Countless religions and motivational speakers promise that you can adjust to the present society and find contentment, but you can’t. The only contentment within a contentious society comes from striving to improve it. Figuring out how to do that doesn’t take a lot of brain power. It might take a little courage.