You know a society is cooked when individuals become exceptionally skilled at rationalising their circumstances - often without realising they're doing so to cope with an unfulfilling life and dissonant personal truths. What’s more troubling is that many pay for this as a service, enlisting a "copeologist" - someone ostensibly trained in the art of making them more metacognitively ensnared. If this coping becomes too much to bear, they are offered the latest "zombie pill" to dull the discomfort. It’s the normalisation of self-gaslighting.
In truth, individuals are often aware of the questions they need to confront - or at least, these questions can be coaxed out of them. Yet, they fear the impact of this awareness because, at times, it dismantles long-standing metacognitive constructs. This process can be psychologically overwhelming - it demands psychological and emotional grit. Such confrontation has the potential to rupture a person’s life to the point where they see through their own illusions. At this stage, it becomes a matter of removing - or, as much as possible, releasing - whatever no longer aligns, which often necessitates the end of a certain lifestyle and key relationships. However, people have grown so accustomed to being coddled and directed that they prefer the illusory comfort that keeps them asleep - rather than embracing the uncomfortable truth.