I Just wanted to bring something up to see what other people had to say about it. Surely we've all noticed the how crazy the world seems to be becoming these days (esp. the Western World) with increases in suicides, in stress, in depression, in shootings/mass murders. Yet, ironically it seems that to me this may all boil down to the basic principle of supply and demand.

In a world where just 30-40 years ago, a person with a Masters degree was considered rare and a computer programmer was considered to be fairly uncommon, we now have a plethora of people to fit pretty much every vocation and many people holding advanced degrees, with most possessing at least a Bachelors degree.

This is merely a microcosm of what I'm talking about, which is that with an increase in worldwide population and global competition, it doesn't suffice to just be "average" or even "good" at any particular task anymore. You must now be "brilliant" or "unique" at what you do, otherwise there will always be someone better to take your job.

In conjunction with this (though this is only a hypothesis) I've noticed an increasing number of people feeling a need to define themselves in evermore assertive and eccentric ways i.e. I'm a hipster, I'm an atheist, I'm different etc. It's not that you can't be any of these things, it's that people seem to feel a need to let everyone else know what they think, who they are and how they're "better", as though they're screaming out to a world that can no longer hear them. The very world that hypocritically professes equality while simultaneously ushering in meritocracy. It seems that a number of people are falling through the sieve of said world and are feeling a need to grab a hold of something that will make them feel unique and valuable.

This wasn't commonplace 40 years ago (at least from what I've heard in my country [Australia]) as there was plenty of work and kudos to go around. Now, with the population increasing fast and having passed the point of no return, people are able to set thresholds to what level of skill they're willing to accept for any given task and others are always going to get left behind, almost like an information age "survival of the fittest".

I'm not really personally affected by this, however I just don't find it particularly pleasant and was wondering what other people's takes were on the matter, cheers.