The Modern Age that is Driving Us All Nutty

According to a mountain of studies (and about 15 minutes watching the evening news), mental illness has seen a significant rise over the past 75 years. If you need anecdotal evidence, just peek into the political landscape—once a forum for working-class ideals, the modern Democratic Party now resembles a group therapy session for unresolved childhood trauma and dysfunctional madness. John F. Kennedy, once their golden boy, would likely be labeled a right wing extremist in today’s progressive drum circle.

We’re not just talking about neuroses anymore. We’re witnessing an explosion of random daily gun violence, social decay, and unhinged public behavior. Obesity is off the charts. Drug and alcohol abuse is now practically a national pastime. There’s a growing fascination with body mutilation, identity confusion, and sexual deviancy packaged as liberation. Depression, anxiety, loneliness—all epidemic. The average American is now medicated, disconnected, and miserable, and that’s on a good day.

There are many reasons, of course—and no one factor is to blame entirely—but let’s cut to the chase and poke at the biggest elephant in the crowded, concrete room: urbanization.

Let’s talk numbers. In 1880, the United States had a grand total of 20 cities with populations over 100,000. Today? 346. Back then, about 80% of Americans lived in rural areas, most involved in agriculture. Now? 80% live in cities, where the closest thing to a plow is a Costco reusable bag.

And here lies the root of the rot.

Farming was no walk in the pasture, but it gave people meaning. You had land, purpose, and a family that probably knew your name. There was food in the ground, animals in the barn, and at least one uncle who could fix anything with baling wire and spit. It was hard, yes, but it was real. You could touch it, pass it down, and build something.

Contrast that with the modern city dweller: a 17-digit account number floating through a a soup of corporate overlords, where your value is calculated in quarterly earnings and LinkedIn endorsements. You can be “downsized,” “restructured,” or “let go” in an instant, (don’t worry, HR will send you a helpful link for a job search website). Relationships come and go like Uber rides. Even churches now market themselves like tech startups—slick logos, no doctrine, and sermons designed not to offend anyone, and offering little insight to the true enduring meanings of life.

Everywhere, the small is consumed by the large. Banks, auto manufacturers, trucking companies—rolled up and sanitized into faceless mega-corporations where you’re just a cog with dental benefits and a 401(k) you don’t understand.

And we wonder why people are cracking?

Modern life is a bureaucratic swamp of forms, deadlines, maintenance schedules, insurance plans, investment accounts, endless regulations—and a constant state of performative panic on social media. A significant portion of the population, who would have thrived in a simpler, steadier world, are instead medicated into numbness and told to “embrace the grind.”

Even our trauma has categories now: PTSD from combat, yes—but also from a 24/7 news cycle that feeds us an unrelenting stream of global misery, scandal, and doom. Your ancestors had to deal with locusts. You have to endure cable news 24/7.

And let’s be honest: this experiment with massive cities is not going well. Humans were not designed to live like termites in high-rise hives. We weren’t made to be packed ten million to a metroplex, breathing each other’s exhaust and swiping for companionship like it’s a clearance sale.

Even here in Montana—God’s country—we’re seeing cities over 100,000 turned into liberal insanity theme parks. Something about stacking people seems to make them lose their grip on reality and start demanding $25 lattes, plastic surgery for their pets, and a thousand new genders by Friday.

We were warned in the Good Book in Isaiah 5:8, “Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.”

That’s not just poetic. It’s prophetic. The Lord God knew where this was headed: spiritual dysfunction, emotional chaos, and a civilization built on noise and narcissism.

It’s time we listen. It’s time we ask whether this great urban march of progress is, in fact, leading us straight off a cliff—with well-lit bike lanes and artisanal cheese stands all the way down.