I feel like Alvin Toffler was already onto something in Future Shock (1970). The modern world is just too interconnected and things are changing too fast. We're constantly thrust into ambiguous situations, exposed to a flood of information beyond our capacity to process, and grievances of the historical past pile up and rub against each other because there are no borders, no boundaries. Careers, ways of life, communities, everything just rent asunder.
Overall, I think our ape reflexes are overwhelmed. No wonder so many of us start to descend into madness in our private, demon-haunted worlds, that Sagan wrote about. All of us are completely overcome by this never-ending torrent. There is no peace.
On top of that, we've had a simmering culture war since before I was born. The volume on it has just got turned up all the way. People are, frankly, traumatized at every turn.
And then, on top of that, technology is just shoveling this pile in your face constantly. Trying to get in every second of every day and get a slice of that sweet, sweet, attention economy. So they can dose it up with some advertising steroids to get you to buy, buy, watch, watch.
Is it any wonder we are all nuts? We're being driven nuts!
So much stress we have is stuff we just put upon ourselves. Oh man I better pick up or else my partner/parent/boss will scold me. I have to put on nice clothes to go out, I can't look like a slob. I am made to feel bad about how I look. I am forced to spend the day sitting and thinking instead of out foraging and using my legs and eyes. I have an insatiable need for ever more material goods thanks to the science of addiction being applied to marketing. I exist as a warmbody to generate disposable income for another to take, I merely hold currency transiently in its passage towards some inevitable black hole of wealth.
IMO society is almost like this behavioral disease. It's no wonder we are so depressed, when it is so very different from what we have evolved to live by: a life of foraging, working on personal survival, and raising kin.
Overall, I think our ape reflexes are overwhelmed. No wonder so many of us start to descend into madness in our private, demon-haunted worlds, that Sagan wrote about. All of us are completely overcome by this never-ending torrent. There is no peace.
On top of that, we've had a simmering culture war since before I was born. The volume on it has just got turned up all the way. People are, frankly, traumatized at every turn.
And then, on top of that, technology is just shoveling this pile in your face constantly. Trying to get in every second of every day and get a slice of that sweet, sweet, attention economy. So they can dose it up with some advertising steroids to get you to buy, buy, watch, watch.
Is it any wonder we are all nuts? We're being driven nuts!