Üsküdar Üniversitesi Founding Rector, Psychiatrist Prof. Dr. Nevzat Tarhan, in his column on the Akademik Akıl platform this week, addressed the topic of “California Syndrome and Turkish”.
Prof. Dr. Nevzat Tarhan, "Modernizing by abandoning our own culture; led to urbanization in city planning, and plaza language in our Turkish."
Worldliness, or secularism as we use the term in psychology terminology. The Turkish Language Association translated Secularism as worldliness into Turkish. I think it expresses a very appropriate philosophical meaning. The thought and feeling that everything happens in this world and there is no accountability at the end of life leads to a serious mental transformation.
To solve a problem, awareness is needed, and after awareness, solutions related to the issue must be produced. Currently, the biggest concern not only for the Islamic world but also for people without religious sensitivities is, “Where is the world going?” There is a discussion about what modernization gained and lost after secularism.
In an agrarian society, the more land you had, the richer you were. In an industrial society, the more goods you produced and the more factories you had, the more powerful you were. Now we are in an information society. The more information you can manage, the more powerful you are. That's why those who control browsers like search engines or various internet channels and platforms will be able to rule the world, dominate, and even influence minds with this.
For this reason, worldliness is currently the biggest weapon of the wicked. They accept worldliness as a norm to prevent people from seeing creation and to change their philosophy of life, and they try to build the world upon it. When we look at the results, there is more egocentricity than has ever been seen in human history. With California syndrome, Westerners experience hedonism, egocentrism, loneliness, and ultimately unhappiness. Relationships where self-interest takes precedence over emotional connections are increasing. We used to say, “If the West doesn't take measures against this, it will collapse itself.” This disease has now spread throughout the world. Because there will be no generation left to work, and sociological decay will be experienced.
A Ministry of Loneliness was established in the UK. 9 million Britons live alone, meaning they live alone in a house, and sudden deaths occur. Living alone harms a person as much as smoking 1 pack of cigarettes a day, and since they cannot solve this problem, they are establishing a ministry.
What did Modernism sow to reap such a fruit, what is it harvesting?
We can say it sowed egoism, and as a result, loneliness emerged. Egoism is actually the critical knowledge at the foundation of worldliness. Loneliness emerged as a problem in the West, and there is also a study on establishing a ministry of loneliness in Norway. This actually shows that these societies are unhappy.
People who derive pleasure from evil have emerged.
The 5 horsemen of darkness…
We call them the 5 horsemen of darkness: “Resentment, Anger, Hatred, Jealousy, Enmity." Modernism increases these emotions. With these emotions, excessive stress hormones are secreted in the brain, shoulder, neck, lower back, and back muscles contract, vascular resistance increases, blood pressure rises, gastrointestinal spasms increase, and related diseases emerge; many psychosomatic illnesses can be listed. If it passes within a few hours, the body rebalances itself, but if there is chronic stress, not just a few hours, damage begins in the body, and many diseases emerge in this way.
The capitalist system and modernization changed the purpose of existence, the purpose of life, and the ego ideal. We cannot currently provide young people with an ego ideal worth living for. When we ask young people, “What is your ideal?”, they say, “I want to have a house, a car, money, be rich, be wealthy, be famous.” Whereas, in the pre-Cold War era, young people had social ideals and goals regardless of their worldly views. Today's youth have egocentric goals instead of social ones. Currently, popular culture is raising conformist individuals.
Hedonism idealizes people chasing pleasure. Japan, aware of this situation, gives children a culture shock for the first 4 years, intensively teaching them their own culture, and then allows social media, television, etc. After receiving this shock, the child is not shaken, becoming more resilient. This is not done in our society. From birth, even in primary school, children are exposed to the influence of popular culture, and thus the child sees hedonism as the purpose of life. Children then grow up to be egocentric. Popular psychology calls such situations California syndrome. Depression is increasing, and people are asking if a virus has emerged. They have secularized people, secularism has increased. Just thinking about the world and chasing pleasure has increased depression.
Studies on the science of happiness are also discussed within the scope of positive psychology. It is called Duchenne Smile . It is even referred to as "the anatomy of a genuine smile." Sometimes we don't feel like smiling, we just pretend to smile. Unlike that, the Duchenne smile is the name given to a genuine, heartfelt smile. Being in a positive emotional state. People who possess this smile, which has become a reference point for positive psychology in this regard, derive more satisfaction from life and, according to statistics, live longer. This smile, of course, also has a communication aspect; smiling is also one of the most important tools of non-verbal social communication. It holds great importance in a person's self-perception and social identity. Another role of smiling is to make people appear more trustworthy.
Smiling, facial expressions, and included gestures are part of non-verbal communication. What about in verbal communication, “I” replacing “we”? Our expressions, which use sufficiently descriptive and rich vocabulary, giving way to short messages, abbreviations, and quickly created voice recordings in the fast-paced daily life brought by popular culture. No one having time for anyone anymore, and the elimination of social and emotional intelligence... How do all these affect our mental health? In the spread of California syndrome like a virus, the role of not speaking, not writing, not using body language due to online communication, and not using language, meaning Turkish, as a means of transmitting the common feelings and thoughts of society, certainly exists.
Social media has become the common communication tool…
Social media youth now prefer to socialize by sitting motionlessly in front of a screen; social media has become the common communication tool. With its unique features, if used correctly, social media can improve writing, reading, and even self-expression. Its beneficial use supports literature, and even language learning, in many examples. However, misuse has the opposite effect, bringing about speech disorders due to long periods of time spent, and writing disorders with the excessive use of abbreviations and emojis. The most common use of "I" language on social media involves frequently making posts that prioritize oneself daily. Selfies, a few quickly written sentences underneath, and certain features used for wider dissemination (hashtag, mention, etc.) make it possible to communicate all day without speaking.
The dangerous language: 'I Language'
When a social gap cannot be provided, the disease of anomie emerges. The change in social norms and the encouragement of speaking with new concepts play a very large role in the anomie of our minds, meaning the disruption of their normal state. When a person constantly spends time on social media, their face-to-face communication skills disappear, and after a while, they become unable to create a conversation space where common feelings and thoughts are exchanged with others. One of the biggest problems of our time is lack of communication. At the root of diseases such as disagreements, hedonism, egocentrism, and egoism lies selfishness and the "I language" used as a result.
There are those who call it "I addiction". For those who prefer to be "I" instead of "we". At the root of these lies a lack of communication. When you look at it, a person actually cannot communicate with their own inner world. They do not speak, smile, or even write within the fast-paced popular culture life. Previously, there was an effort to write beautifully, but now we see that writing forms, a component of Turkish, are also deteriorating. Instead of writing long texts, abbreviations, emojis, or asynchronous voice recordings have emerged. Underlying this is an "I" centric communication. The person communicates via mobile phones at their desired time and in their desired style, and again expects feedback in their desired manner. We call this "empathy blindness"; not taking into account the feelings and thoughts of the other person.
Every individual is valuable; knowing that one is valuable plays an important role in a person's mental well-being. This is also the antidote to loneliness. One of the things that will enable us to express this value correctly to others is the proper use of Turkish. You can add the transfer of feelings and thoughts, i.e., body language, to this. Sometimes, just a smile to the other person will suffice.
Modernizing by abandoning our own culture led to urbanization in city planning, and plaza language in our Turkish… Let's not forget this! If we try to be universal without being local and alienate ourselves from our own language, meaning if we adopt imitating others as modernism, we will become second-class in the eyes of the people we envy.