Modern day realities that people all over the word deal with on a day to day basis, in many regions, may suffer from a combination of stress, malnourishment and undereducation, overwork, and even the feeling of helplessness can further attribute to a societal decline, especially in some political and economic systems.
I will ‘briefly’ reflect on these ideas below, before continuing to the key idea of how these stressors are now affecting our abilities to plan for the future.
Chronic Stress and Cognitive Function
As seen from academia, chronic stress significantly impacts cognitive function, particularly memory, learning, and decision-making.Studies have shown that prolonged exposure to stress can damage areas of the brain like the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, which are vital for complex thought and emotional regulation (3).
In environments where stress is a constant, this cognitive decline can hinder an individual’s ability to adapt and thrive. The negative effects of chronic stress are evident across all ages, but children and adults living in high-stress environments are particularly vulnerable to long-term impairments in cognitive performance (4).
Malnutrition and Undereducation
Malnutrition during critical developmental years, especially in early childhood, has been shown to impair cognitive abilities, making it harder for individuals to learn, remember, or adapt to new challenges (5). Lack of adequate nutrition, combined with undereducation, limits a person's cognitive capacity, often leading to lifelong disadvantages.
In many contemporary settings, this double burden creates a population that is ill-equipped to engage in critical thinking or resist oppressive systems. When education is neglected, it exacerbates the effects of malnutrition, leaving individuals with few tools to break the cycle of poverty or oppression (6).
Chronic overwork not only damages physical health but also reduces cognitive capacity. Stress from excessive work hours leads to mental exhaustion, diminishing one’s ability to think critically, problem-solve, or even organize resistance. With reduced cognitive function, people are less likely to challenge the systems exploiting them, making overwork a subtle yet powerful tool for maintaining control. This phenomenon underscores how overwork can prevent social mobilization and reinforce the status quo, as individuals struggling to survive have little mental energy left to question or resist the challenges that oppress them.
Not only that, on a smaller scale overwork, especially in children regarding cramming and extraneous after school activities can impact one’s ability to navigate normal societal environments (8).
In combination with Stress, Malnutrition, and Undereducation, these stressors can create a big issue we are still learning more and more about today.
Learned Helplessness and Social Control
While I am personally not a huge fan of the Learned Helplessness Ideology, it can be seen in situations where there are overtly oppressive settings.
Learned helplessness occurs when individuals repeatedly face situations they can’t control, eventually leading to a passive acceptance of their circumstances. In oppressive environments, this psychological state can become a tool of social control, where citizens, worn down by repeated failure, believe their actions cannot alter their situation. This passivity is dangerous for resistance movements, as it prevents individuals from challenging or questioning the status quo, and even hindering a society's broader ability to counteract large scale problems effectively (9).
When people feel powerless, their ability to resist or even recognize injustice is severely diminished, which is exactly the outcome some existing systems seek in our contemporary world today regarding a myriad of topics, including climate change (10).
