In Lauren Oyler’s essay about anxiety last week, she referenced a late 19th century diagnosis known as Americanitis, which described “the high-strung, nervous, active temperament of the American people.” Whether incited by advances in technology (causing loss of sleep, excessive worry) or capitalism (causing long work days, fast pace of life), the result was, according to experts of the time, a rattled population unable to relax. A black mirror of the American dream, Americanitis took the same ideas favored by patriots and recast them as depressing. Here is the land of possibilities—so vast in scale you’ll forever be unsatisfied!
Saved by Lani Assaf and
Behind this palpable negativity lie three major drivers: first, worries that rising economic prosperity in America (what historian James Truslow Adams once called the American Dream) has come to an end; second, worries that civil discord may either split America into pieces or crush its democratic institutions; and third, worries that America is su
... See moreIf neurasthenic sensitivity was the hallmark of nineteenth-century invalidism, a kind of hyperpersonalized concern with wellness is the hallmark of twenty-first-century invalidism—a quality that lets the rest of us dismiss the invalid as fussy or oversensitive while we get back to our frenetic, endlessly connected, productive lives.
I lie in bed anxious that the many jobs I hold in this gig economy will all disappear, or burning with indigestion after accidentally letting a raw onion pass my lips.