[asg70]

I think something that has been ignored lately is some of the milder but still significant quality of life issues that modern 21st century life has created for ourselves. When I say "milder", no, they aren't life-threatening, but they do put a crimp on overall quality of life in a big way which has been bothering me a lot lately.

They say that as population goes up, the value of any individual life diminishes.

I think culture in the first world is starting to really be impacted by this. By everyone's reality being mediated by the Internet, social currency becomes one and only one thing: attention. Moderate discourse doesn't get people's attention. Only shouting at the top of your lungs, intentionally shocking, terminating each sentence with expletives.

Same deal with fashion. In the past, sure, kids wore wacky clothes, maybe dyed their hair or had a mohawk, but all of these things were temporary. Now radical body modification is considered the norm and if you don't have full sleeves of tats you're square.

Now look at entertainment. As society becomes increasingly desensitized, movies need to keep ratcheting up the sensory overload. Cameras are shaking and wobbling. Explosions are booming. Soundtracks are thumping the war drums. Characters are constantly running and shouting and shooting. The difficulty a cerebral film like Blade Runner 2049 had in making back its overhead is part of this phenomenon. Compare that to the pacing and visual overload of, let's say, Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Now look at politics. There have been many studies pointing to the increased polarization and silo-ization going on. People are no longer listening to the other side, nor is the other side speaking in a way that might engender the other side to listen. Donald Trump's bully-like language merely reflects the normal way that people treat each other online, which is with nothing but contempt and condescension.

Now let's look at our actual personal lives. We spend all our time staring into screens. Now increasingly we're using our screens for dating, but what passes for dating is increasingly nothing more than casual one night stands. Because a whole generation has now trained itself to make instant judgments based on photos, they've applied this thumbs up/down mentality to people.

So we've sort of become these atomized blocks that stand for nothing but the pursuit of attention and instant-gratification. Community and family continue to erode. Political differences widen.

I think if you were to take all of the chatter on the Internet and crunch through it, probably 90% of it would be Idiocracy-grade stupidity, mostly petty arguments about entertainment, sports, or tempest-in-a-teapot politics (like the janitor corn pop).

I don't think these problems would be so acute if we didn't have this perfect storm of a huge population and the means of connecting them together. This was supposed to result in a utopia but it's actually creating a dystopia.

The analogy I often use when I describe this to my family is, imagine you were reading the daily newspaper (yes on paper) and a bunch of random people crowded around your breakfast table to tell you how to think about the article you just read. "Fake news!" one guy would say. "It's just the lilbtards!" says another. When everyone has a voice it creates HUGE signal-to-noise-ratio problems. It actually feels like a verbal assault to have to scan through a day's worth of information and all the ignorant opinionating going on. It's very difficult to avoid jousting back. All that jousting can feel entertaining in moderation, but too much of it just raises everyone's stress levels and makes us go through life feeling constantly under siege.

This jousting effect is similar to the chatter in the brain trying to synthesize fuzzy logic. Is it true? HOW true is it? So the Internet is a hive mind. The problem is that this collective hive-mind is not that good since most people are stupid but because of the Dunning Kruger effect we think we're smarter than we are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E ... ger_effect

So as far as I'm concerned, how the world is oriented at present makes us least able to deal with situations that require that we come together and do the smartest things as a species and for the long-haul.

I offer no solutions to this. I'm just passing along my observations.

[Plantagenet]

Just because you spend all your time staring into a screen don’t assume everyone else is wasting their time the same way

You only think that way because you’re wasting too much time on the internet.

I suggest you get out and do something real. Now.

Cheers!

[asg70]

Your response is a great example.

1) Hypocrisy



2) Lack of proper perspective

[Newfie]

Yo both have something of a point.

On the one hand it is very difficult to describe “normal” for humans. Sure our culture is changing and adapting. And I’m no big fan of the direction. I personally think it’s related to over population stress. It’s not like we are India where they have higher population densities but also their culture has evolved with high populations. Our developed recently based on low population. The rate of change is murder.

On he other it’s unlikely you can do much about it and if you take a wider perspective, read about more cultures, you will see that “normal” for humanity is a pretty wide brush.

[asg70]

I used to have a friend from China and he was the first guy who told me that life is cheap, based on his experience being over there. This is also why you get situations like adulterated baby formula and Tiananmen square massacres. This is also a factor in the violence in the middle east as Gaza is so densely populated.

People just stop giving a shit when they feel they are just one in a teaming mass of humanity.

I was also inspired to write this rant based on seeing what's become of Pew Die Pie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61686cq6s7c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9y-qD0Ed0s

After he stepped on a politically correct landmine he has responded by growing out a beard and behaving so crazy that I would not be surprised if he blows his head off with a sawed-off shotgun. Empty reality-show "celebrity" is a zero-sum game that always seems to lead to a fiery trainwreck, but I think that's sort of the default trajectory of today's aimless youth.

To a certain extent a suicide bomber in Gaza is the same as Pew Die Pie. He just had to resort to more extreme measures to get recognized as an individual.

Naturally in a hangout like this where some people are holed up in rural areas and are at or near retirement age it will be hard to acknowledge this reality, but that's what it is.

At least in India they have religion to cling to, but outside of the bible belt there's nothing in the US. I guess rigid ideology has taken the place of religion.

A lot of people like to reference the film They Live in outlining cultural rot, but there's a big difference is the overlay of narcissism and the rapid deterioration of interpersonal skills. It took a bad situation and only made it worse.

[Newfie]

I loose a lot of the cultural references anymore, had to look up the PIE guy.

Humanity is a weird amalgam. On the one hand we are adapted to living in small family tribes. But, because this leads to continual feuding we have adapted to living in large cooperative communities.

It’s an inate contradiction. We are never comfortable with either extreme. Well, some are, self domesticated herd animals.

[Tanada]

IMO your understanding of human nature is severely colored buy the environment you grew up in. Over the entire planet through all of human existence prior to 1945 there was no empathy for 'the other'. People were enslaved or exploited by those with power and authority at every opportunity in every country.

Post WW II in North America and Europe a 'progressive' mindset was promoted for people to always try and think outside the tribal box, look at issues from the other guys point of view, inclusion and diversity of thought were and are celebrated like at no other time in human history.

The culture today sponsored by the USA post WW II is the aberration from normal human behavior, not the normal procedure. This was made possible by abundant supplies of energy in North America allowing for an advanced technological base that in turn created a very efficient military in enforcing the ideals of the USA upon the world. Western Europe had the same sort of progressive idealism during the same period and gladly joined in on this empathize with the other idealism culture.

However the rest of the world did not adopt this empathy shtick beyond in most cases a bit of lip service to sound good to the USA diplomats pressuring them. Look at the history of South America or Asia or Africa over the last 75 years and it looks just like the history of the previous 10,000 years except the authorities have better weapons and spying technology to control the masses.

The USA/Europe and their fellow western nations of Canada/Australia/New Zealand/ South Africa have been bastions for the last 25 years of empathy for the other. As a result the EU has been flooded with Islamic militant immigrants who want to change their culture to match that of the countries they left while the USA has been flooded with poor Hispanics from all over Latin America who in many cases want to retain their former culture instead of integrating into the 'American' way of life. In both cases the 'empathetic' authorities invited these floods of immigrants in for the purposes of providing cheap labor and diluting the power of the common folk in their own regions.

Inevitably this is leading to a backlash in North America and Europe. Even in Australia and New Zealand where immigration is less of a massive influx the controls have been tightened up considerably and the poor are not welcomed with open arms like they have been in North America and EU regions. It is hard to maintain empathy for a poor Hispanic worker who has migrated to the USA to try and improve his and his families lives at the expense of your own wage scales as the employers seek the lowest cost workers they can get. The same is true in the EU where in Germany and Sweden and France the Islamic immigrants have formed their own communities where 'outsiders' from the surrounding host nation are not welcome and gangs of thugs use intimidation or outright violence to keep the communities separate.

[KaiserJeep]

I suppose it was my entirely conventional early training with a bunch of Old Testament fundamentalists, but in spite of all the opinions to the contrary, life is not cheap and man has been given dominion over the Earth and all creatures and plants and insects on it.

So far we have been letting our ape instincts guide our behavior unfettered. But either that changes, or we find a new place to live. I have observed the human race over six decades and frankly, I rate the chance of any meaningful changes as slim to none. Yes of course there are people who succeed, after achieving prosperity and acquiring an education, and thinking deeply about such things. But that will never describe more than about 10% of the humans, and the other 90% mean that we are doomed on this world. So find a new place to live that is not on Earth - they'll never get off the planet.

Tanada, you are mostly correct - only you left out the role of religion. The Catholic Church probably had more success in overcoming the ape instincts than anybody else, to give them their due. But the percieved obsolescence of religion has not been replaced by anything of a positive nature - the internet amplifies a person's natural personality beyond bounds. One can continue to mature in any direction, or dissolve into a lesser unthinking creature. As always it is up to you.

[Newfie]

Tanada
I do think we have inate “empathy”. It it is limited to our group, whatever that is. In larger cultures the size of the empathy group expands, as you note.

But also as the calories become more and more expensive these large empathy groups will dissolve. I think that is pretty evident in world events over the past 25 years. It is really at the core of my collapse theory. As things wind down the empathy groups get smaller leading to more bloodshed.

Look to the partisan divide thread for examples.

[Tanada]

This topic seemed familiar so I rooted around and found the old thread, you all might want to see what other had to say on the topic, especially if you are a newer member of the board.

Compassion After Peak

[Outcast_Searcher]

The Catholic Church probably had more success in overcoming the ape instincts than anybody else, to give them their due.

Before we claim how great religion X has been, both the good and the bad need to be pondered and balanced.
Given that the Catholic religion is STILL pushing people to breed unabated in a very overcrowded world is madness. And their long term push toward more Catholics has been self serving (toward more income) and not about helping anyone, IMO.

Things like the Inquisition and the child rape conspiracy/complicity are so far over the top and so against what are supposed to be the principles of Christianity -- that I can't just give the Catholic religion overall a pass on that. (And I can't think of more egregious examples of a complete lack of empathy than systematically torturing people, and especially children -- for personal gain or pleasure).

To me, at the end of the day, religion is probably overall a net neutral re humanity. After all, it's conceived, run, and about people, regardless of whatever flavor of "truth" a given religion happens to be extolling.

[KaiserJeep]

OS, I just don't see it that way. For every abuse by members of the CC, there are 999 (at least) acts of Christian charity and kindness, which simply are not newsworthy. If one were to compare rates of perversion, crime, and general anti-social behavior between those of a religious nature and the public at large, I am certain that the religious would compare extremely favorably. That such institutions are not perfect I acknowledge and even expect.

[asg70]

I don't really buy the "energy surplus post WWII enables empathy" argument because if anything we are more coddled and more spoiled today than we were in the 1950s. Why wouldn't we in turn be more polite, more domesticated, more docile? I think energy surplus beyond a certain point breeds a dangerous level of self-destructive decadence ala the final days of Rome.

Nobody relies on anyone else for survival anymore. I don't particularly care who is working as a Wal-Mart greeter. Farming is depersonalized. There's no more Mr. Hooper types.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4CKuSRYrcQ

Social cohesion was once vital for survival. Now nobody really needs anyone and so nobody feels obligated to get along let alone talk to each other face to face. There's a limited sense of anyone having a greater mission to accomplish in life or that the person next to you on the bus might be doing something really valuable for society. We're all just kind of...occupying space.

I'm not saying we should all live like Amish. I'm just trying to tease out the cause and effect here. Once society is coddled to this extent then social bonds are no longer seen as necessary. What you have in its place are various clubs representing common interests and ideologies. Doomerism is one of them. It's just that within these clubs even, there is no decorum. It's just a hangout in which people can proceed to clobber each other with insults for sport.



You don't need organized religion as much as you need something, some philosophy or sense of purpose to hang your hat on, something beyond whining and being outraged over brown corn pop janitors.

[Ibon]

I was thinking about the role digital media and interactions play on this topic and have come to the conclusion that the internet did not create the problem, it only provided the venue to expose unashamedly the mediocrity that modern materialism has bred into society at large.

Since most everybody works in service industry jobs these days that are no longer tied to place the fabric of small town life has been torn from its organic roots. The anonymity of suburban and urban life mirrors perfectly the anonymity of the internet where you can allow your inner asshole to run wild. We elect leaders who exemplify crass narcissism and legitimize selfish mediocrity.

In earlier times empathy was present but not indulgent either. There was civic duty and each person was expected to carry his weight and not be a burden on others. Life was tougher and folks were therefore less forgiving to individualism. Parents would scold their children for selfish indulgence. Today it is the parents of children who provide the role model of being the narcissist.

[Plantagenet]

Your response is a great example....

Lack of proper perspective

You seem to believe that only people who live where you live have “the proper perspective” on things.

You are displaying one of the main things that many people criticize about the internet— it allows like-minded narrow minded boobs to connect with other narrow minded boobs from the exact same background, region, or racist mindset, or who share the same viewpoint on the right or left —- and then filter out those who dont share the exact same kinds of ignorance and prejudice that forms the core of their own narrow perspective.

This is site has traditionally been a bit different, with people of wildly different viewpoints and living all over the world getting together to share their views and predictions for the future and talk about a wide range of topics.

Cheers!

[Cog]

If you don't like the things I like you are not empathetic to me. See how that works?

[Newfie]

Cog,

em·pa·thy
ˈempəTHē
noun
the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.