At what age did you start to get the feeling that something is profoundly wrong in society?

[Final Escape]

For me, it began with my early attempts to get mental health help because I started to see that I was beginning to have serious difficulties in my life that other people were not. I was not aware that a lot of it was lack of moral education, spiritual brokenness, and not learning to critically think. Things like this had some to do with it. Then I realized that many of these doctors I went to probably didn't learn much of this either but they became doctors because they complied with the requirements to get in but they didn't necessarily have good morals. Child abuse needs to be handled in part from a moral base. Since it has to be validated and acknowledged that you were harmed.

 

[MistakesHappen]

I would say at 14. I started showing "symptoms" of my "disorder" and had the time to really think about it.
I love to see that the more truth you discover the more you get labelled insane.
Probably i'm a bit harsh, I'm sorry.

 

[21Neberg]

I was 14 when I first started thinking about suicide. Ofcourse, at that age, I didn't attempt. I cut myself for a bit until I deciced to seek help. On one hand, I regret it since, well, I'm here again four years later. But on the other hand, I had a couple of nice times over the past years that I'm thankful for.

I'm really in the same boat as I was four years ago again, but this time I'm cutting deeper and planning to go through with attempting to kill myself. Let's see how this shitshow turns out!

 

[ReadyasEver]

I would say around 15, my freshman year in high school. People were evaluated based on looks and means. Really disgusted me to no end.

 

[Final Escape]

One thing that sticks out to me. Children are our future and messages about how much we love kids and want the best for them. Well I didnt feel this way as a kid in the US in public school in the 80's lol! It was more like the opposite happened. Screw the children and their futures lol! Now..I understand that I was an immigrant and with a single mom from Hungary so this made things more complicated but I did become fluent in English within a few years. So it wasn't like I wasn't assimilating.

 

[ctrl_alt_delete]

Age seven.

Almost all grown-ups appeared to me to be demons.
Grown-ups rule society.
Society is a reflection of those who rule it.
Therefore...

 

[HellinHeaven]

At the age of ten, I got to psychiatric hospital, with thirteen I remember my first concrete idea of suicide to leave them. I was never been a real part of society, just in former times I had no courage to stand beyond. Meanwhile I am sure, most of the people who are able to live in this society and think they are good citizens have a mental disorder.

 

[Angst Filled Fuck Up]

I have often found it difficult to distinguish between what is wrong with me, and what is wrong with society. I was a hugely sensitive kid. My family always jokes that I cried every day until I was 7 years old, which is true. So from a very early age, I felt sad, scared, and like nothing about this world was really for me.

Since then I've struggled every step of the way, with just about every aspect of life. But of course, there's also the plain old injustice of life itself, which I became aware of in my teens. To this day, 25,000 people die of starvation daily. The richest 26 people in the world are as rich as the poorer 50% of the world. It's just insane.

 

[ThinkingAboutThis]

Around 18 years old. Horrible things started to happen on a massive scale, and I was caught absolutely unprepared for one of the most defining experiences of my life. I was able to put it all behind me by the age of 20 (mostly by moving very far away), but, apparently, the unsettling scariness of what I'd lived through lingered in my subconscious, and I had very few people to share my experiences with. Most made silly jokes about it, which I kind of semi-appreciated since the subject matter was so serious and impossible to go into 100%.

 

[ParamitePie]

I feel as though my values have always starkly contrasted with those of modern western civilization. As a result, I have always been quietly contemptuous of people. I can accept people who live up to their own standards, even if I disagree with what they believe in, but I didn't even see that many people who even bothered attempting such a thing. The brazen hypocrisy of most people always put me off. I guess I've always held abstract ideas more highly than other people, but I can't shake that romantic sensibility I have, even if it makes me feel like I've always been a bitter old man.

Since I was unable to find any of my values reflected by the society around me, I sought out political theories and spiritual practices which seemed more promising than what I found in the modern world. The more I studied, the more dissociated I felt from the people around me, and the more I came to identify with lost causes and radical movements which had impossible dreams. Even if I disagreed with them, I celebrated how they rocked the boat and envied people that could die for a cause they believed in wholeheartedly. I guess that was the spark which turned me towards practically considering suicide. I decided to jettison myself from this world because I clearly don't belong here.

 

[StreamingMySuicide]

I don't really have a set age but I have a range.. It's 7-13 I'd say. My memory isn't good so that's the best I can come up with.

 

[2 be or not]

... The richest 26 people in the world are as rich as the poorer 50% of the world. It's just insane.

More insane, the rich continue to get richer, as of this time last year just eight (8) individuals, all men, owned as much wealth as the poorest half of the world's population, Oxfam said. Even more insane, the number may be lower today.

As to the OP question: 30 years, I'm slow, I know. It took me that long to get a broad view of society. Prior to that I was focused on what I had to do to survive, not society. I believed the BS but no longer do.

 

[Othermind]

There's nothing "wrong" with society. A successful society is a society that manages to get to the next generation, all other definitions are arbitrary. You, or me, or anyone not fitting in or the supposed human or ethical costs we might take issue with are all immaterial.
And I said "next generation" because that's roughly how far ahead we plan as a species.

 

[ParamitePie]

There's nothing "wrong" with society. A successful society is a society that manages to get to the next generation, all other definitions are arbitrary. You, or me, or anyone not fitting in or the supposed human or ethical costs we might take issue with are all immaterial.
And I said "next generation" because that's roughly how far ahead we plan as a species.

Ah yes, because Oceania, North America and Europe aren't aging continents which are entirely reliant on mass immigration to buoy their birthrate.

 

[Othermind]

Ah yes, because Oceania, North America and Europe aren't aging continents which are entirely reliant on mass immigration to buoy their birthrate.

Yes, but for now they're still afloat so they're still successful.
Your standards for success are unreasonable for the human species, we just don't plan that far ahead, we're hard at work every day to make the planet uninhabitable within the next 100 years tops and nobody's even trying to address the systemic issues that are bringing about this catastrophe.
We live in the here and now, pretty much,considering it a failure for us not to last another million years is like criticizing a butterfly for not storing provisions for the winter.

 

[Misanthrope]

Early secondary school was my awakening into the world of absurdity. I was an absolute unashamed nerd, I still am and wear it with pride. I was getting bullied for it by bullies that were into cars and knew everything about cars. So I pointed out that nerds were the ones that helped develop them and the sciences that make them work consistently were also developed by nerds. Made the mistake of pointing out their complete knowledge of cars also kinda made them nerds as well. This did not go down well…

It got more absurd because I got in trouble often in class for asking lots of questions. I found that bizarre in a place of education. So I just stopped asking questions. I got thrown out of Religious education often because I would point out how that made no sense, was sick, and is that not contradictory?

The real clincher though was seeing a careers advisor and doing a mock interview for a job in a supermarket. He asked me why do you want this job? I responded with, "Because I need money to pay for things." The advisor looked like I had just done a shit on the carpet and told me, "You can't say that." I told him, "Why else would I work at a supermarket?" That conversation of just being told you can't say that underscored a realisation that life is an absurd dance. Full of pretence and idiocy that makes no sense but we have to act like it does.

As I have got older the awareness of the ridiculous dances has worsened to the point I honestly can't look at anything and not find it just painfully stupid and depressing. I sometimes feel like a crash-landed alien dissecting specimens in an attempt to understand what I am surrounded by. But it all points at shared insanity as the core answer. I feel like a scared alien and this is the wrong planet to be stranded on. It all just seems terminally absurd and painful to me.

One of my favourite quotes. "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." J. Krishnamurti

 

[Johnnythefox]

life is an absurd dance

It is indeed, and like many dances I've been to, I'm going to leave early without a word as dancing isn't really my thing.

I'm tired of the dance of work, the dance of making it through the day, the dance to money.
We are all just marionettes in the system.

 

[ParamitePie]

Yes, but for now they're still afloat so they're still successful.
Your standards for success are unreasonable for the human species, we just don't plan that far ahead, we're hard at work every day to make the planet uninhabitable within the next 100 years tops and nobody's even trying to address the systemic issues that are bringing about this catastrophe.
We live in the here and now, pretty much,considering it a failure for us not to last another million years is like criticizing a butterfly for not storing provisions for the winter.

"Look, I might be drowning in debt, but the loan sharks haven't shattered my kneecaps yet, so I'm still successful. It's unreasonable to expect me not to drown in debt, ruin the ecosystem, consume more natural resources than every generation which came before me, push all my problems on a death spiral of future generations, punch a hole the size of our moon into the atmosphere and import desperate foreigners from impoverished countries to pay for my pension. Shit, what do you think I am, Superman?" Yeah, I'm not buying it. If western civilization were alive, it would be even more suicidal than we are.

 

[waived]

@Othermind

'Not fitting in' and 'human costs' aren't immaterial. Those things are material to those who have to suffer through it. It is material for the individual and others. Society isn't arbitrary it is made up of complex systems created and maintained by people for specific purposes and therefore the criticisms, identification, or definition of it isn't arbitrary either, it is material (and logical). The instances where people genuinely negate it are brilliant although nothing close to enough and yeah that history is a tired one and I share your pessimism but I don't think a pessimism followed by a rationalizing of its continuation is anything less than a ritualized self sacrifice to a god. Its future generations don't matter to me.

@the thread

6-7 years old

 

[Othermind]

"Look, I might be drowning in debt, but the loan sharks haven't shattered my kneecaps yet, so I'm still successful. It's unreasonable to expect me not to drown in debt, ruin the ecosystem, consume more natural resources than every generation which came before me, push all my problems on a death spiral of future generations, punch a hole the size of our moon into the atmosphere and import desperate foreigners from impoverished countries to pay for my pension. Shit, what do you think I am, Superman?" Yeah, I'm not buying it. If western civilization were alive, it would be even more suicidal than we are.

Did I mention individuals anywhere in my post?

Society isn't arbitrary it is made up of complex systems created and maintained by people for specific purposes and therefore the criticisms, identification, or definition of it isn't arbitrary either, it is material (and logical)

I meant criteria that define a society's success beyond its survival to the next generation are arbitrary. And yeah I could have articulated that other bit better, but what I meant was that if an "individual" (which, by its classical definition, I don't even believe exists) does not fit in or suffers heavily because of a given society's workings, it does not matter as long as it is capable of attaining its one goal, which I've stated above.

 

[ParamitePie]

Did I mention individuals anywhere in my post?

What are you even talking about? I was using an illustrative example of why your conception of a civilization's success is, to put it lightly, warped. A society which is declining in population (and in the cases of some western nations, in a death spiral), heavily indebted, destroying its environment, can't pay promised obligations towards its people, and requires both foreign investment and mass migration to simply stay afloat isn't successful. Simply because Enron existed in 2001, doesn't mean they were a successful corporation; they presented themselves as such, and still existed as a corporate entity, but they were nevertheless a house of cards.

 

[Vegrau]

16/17. The moment I started to think why do we even follow anything at all. Rules, ways, desires and wishes of others. Illogicalities, duality and madness of this life. I realize nothing has ever been right since the start.

 

[Armadillo]

Not necessarly that society was "wrong", but I realized that the world was full of what I'd call it "injustice" and "evil" at the time since I was in kindergarten.

I noticed how some kids had a lot of toys and some only a few, some had caring parents some cold and unaffective, some were healthy some were not, some were picked on and some had it easy and a lot of other stuff. I thought about ill people, homeless people, animals that were abused and viewed a lot of the suffering in the world as unnecessary if only humans were more emphatyc (naïve, I know, I didn't even know how to tie my shoes atm LOL).
Then I accepted inequality, thinking that not much could be done against it and it was just natural and to be dealt with.
To me the world was full of bad things but the good ones were more valuable.
I was ready to live life and grow up, had high hopes and thought that my existence would almost surely be enjoyable despite all.

 

[waived]

I meant criteria that define a society's success beyond its survival to the next generation are arbitrary.

The measurement of success as 'getting to the next generation and nothing more' is society refiying itself and the systems that support it. Such rationalizing on its behalf is against self interest and the lived experience of pain and trauma that society requires by design in order for it to function. In this way the spiritual fetishization of emergent future generations (belonging to society proper) as a measure of material success is inherently alien to individuals having to experience it in such a negative way which is most of our species. Society of course being a specific thing and having systems and people within it to violently enforce all of this.

You mentioned that nobody is doing much to stop the catastrophe and while I share the pessimistic sentiment I think that is a bit terse. As I mention below society produces subjects. Who seek change through means exclusively made available by the people who are in control of society such as just waiting, electoral and parliamentary politics, activism, conscious consumerism, nationalism, borders, democracy, and other myths. I don't believe there is going to be a singular moment when things shift or that a collection of increasingly more prevalent fiery responses to crisis and attempts at life outside of society's prescribed methods-as-self-preservation is going to inherently offer a way out. But it could. Or not.

And yeah I could have articulated that other bit better, but what I meant was that if an "individual" (which, by its classical definition, I don't even believe exists) does not fit in or suffers heavily because of a given society's workings, it does not matter as long as it is capable of attaining its one goal, which I've stated above.

I'm not sure what you mean by classical definition of the individual but my guess is since it is classical it is also a logical product of society. This logical societal production of the individual is just a part of society's reification. The specifics of this conversation and a lot of other conversations on this board indicates it's lack of 'realness', in the opposition to this identity, because of the material reality. The world grows thin and we can see forever, etc..

 

[ScorpiusDragon]

In high school, I felt a huge amount of anger and sadness within me, but I didn't know how to put it into words. I was known as the sheltered genius kid, so I was an extremely easy target in my school. I think I unconsciously realized that there was something seriously wrong with human nature. But at that time, I didn't see the real world enough to realize that my experiences in high school are only a small reflection of how a lot of people are in society.

 

[Divine Trinity]

Around 4 or 6 I remember a vague sense that things weren't right, by age 12 it was blatantly apparent that many aspects of life were distorted within this society and a lot of people I interacted with. As a child it was a sort of intuition guiding my thoughts, but I obviously lacked the insight and knowledge to comprehend any of it. By the time puberty hit I was tired of dealing with the bullshit of day-to-day life and that feeling grew with time. Fast forward a decade or so and here I am looking for a way out of this monolith of surgical catastrophe.

 

[epsilon]

19-21, it's quite late and i finally realised that it is just not my world. Your race and your look determine everything and i don't even have a chance. So i'm here for peace.

 

[262653]

Somewhere after abandoning school, when I had the time to step back and look at things around me. It felt wrong, not being in accordance with my sense of justice/fairness/morality, and my wants of course. But now I think it's okay for things to be the way they are, not the way they are expected to be, by you or me. That conflict is inevitable and we naturally inclined to step onto each other's toes.

 

[StillWaiting]

17. When I started to become depressed. Overthinking about life now I can't go back anymore

 

[paintedhouse]

12. I started realizing that many things were pointless. I ignored it until age 18 when I started considering ctb constantly from there on out.