I’ve long thought that many people from the United States, particularly American white people, are terrified of the emotional sensation of meaning. If they aren’t scared of it, it at the very least makes them uncomfortable.

It doesn’t seem to be as much of a thing for people from Europe, they hold more eye contact and just maintain a sensation of meaning socially more than Americans (in my experience).

The escape from meaning takes the form of an “ironic” culture. Everything must be funny and ironic, and the moment meaning enters the stage, it’s quickly diffused with a joke or awkward comment about its presence.

Or, if there is intense emotion, it’s allowed only when discussing people’s hatred for their political rivals or distaste for whatever thing they don’t like—though that too makes most people shy, and God forbid someone express overwhelming meaning, joy, or appreciation of beauty in public view. That’ll get people uncomfortable real quick.

There’s a slyness to it, a sort of it, “I’m too chill for real emotions, lol” vibe. It’s all about being nonchalant, not caring too much, avoiding “awkward” silence. For straight men, meaning is gay and will be sidecut by some bravado when it shows up.

It pervades almost every element of our culture. Marvel movies (and Star Wars now too) constantly interrupt moments of passion and meaning with cheap jokes and ironic comments. Most top-charts music has a dreamy, not-caring-too-much tone and the lyrics are even less emotional.

In the past, people still seemed to have permission for a sort of superficial “fun” meaning, with cheesy pop lyrics and awkward 90s romcoms. It’s not exactly the intensity I’m referring to, but even that vibe seems to have disintegrated, leaving mostly irony.

I’m still working on why this is a thing and why it’s specifically more of a thing in the United States, but I have a few theories.

First is that nearly everyone is carrying pain from breakups, childhood disfunction, and all the other pain-causing things. It’s a very, very rare person who doesn’t have quite a few unprocessed emotions. When a person looks you in the eye silently, or when a movie has a particularly emotional part, and meaning arises, it connects you with your own pain. Nearly everyone avoids facing their deepest pain, and I believe this might be on the rise because we have more escapes now than ever before, and our menu of escapes just keeps growing.

The other element is people’s relationship to what I will call God. Americans have largely left the religious experience, and chill Atheism is on the rise. I don’t care about the logical or material validity to either side of the God argument—for thousands of years religious ritual held the space for people to have transcendent experiences of meaning and emotion, and that’s just gone now with no replacement for most people.

There is no context for most people to have profoundly meaningful experiences, so many people don’t even know what that means, but they sense there is something more to be had of the emotional experience.

Maybe the loss of religion in people’s lives meant they lost the context to feel their deep pain through transcendent Love experiences, that pain has now accumulated, and any moment that connects us to that silence between noises is scary because it reminds us of the burdens we carry, so we try to escape it with alcohol, drugs, humor, relationships, our obsession with our insecurities, or whatever else we can find.

I don’t know. But I’d like to help people access meaning if I can.