Despite what the media tells you and what you have probably been lead to believe, no, the world isn't turning into shit. What does the news report? Shootings, economic problems, abductions, etc. Why? As Marilyn Manson said, it's a culture of fear and consumption. You have pimples? The girls are not going to fuck you. Oh look at what hurricane Sandy did to its victims! Buy our emergency radio! Face it: We want to be scared. The media reacts according to what we respond to, and we don't respond to happy things. I've heard a case of a company trying to do positive news - happy stories only. Nobody watched it. Crime is down, people. We live in a golden era of peace. Statistics don't lie.
The economy is bad? How about mentioning that we live better today than kings up until an eye-blink ago, did? Of course not. There are abductions and shit going on! Nope. Recently in the news, there has been a spike in shootings - a tragedy, to be sure, but also an exercise of stupidity. Because people die on our soil and they were children, it a national tragedy. But if tons of men die out on the battlefield, it's a statistic and nobody really cares. Crime today is at an all-time low in recent history, and the crime in recent history has been the lowest in recorded history; and it's safe to assume that crime in recorded history is lower than in unrecorded history, before any real society was made.
There's this idea that the past was the best - and often, the idea is wrong. We often look at the past with rose-tinted glasses. The past was predictable. We like that. We were comfortable. Imagine if elders were sucked into an age of simulated shootings, and free sex and drug use. Imagine how shocked they would be. The idealized Victorian ettiquette was anything but. Females were more like extensions of the man; females were to be submissive, nice, kind, and ladylike. Failure to do that would result in being ostracized. It was forced politeness, not politeness out of respect. The idealized farm life of America? Complete bullshit. Life was extremely hard. That's why we moved to the cities in the first place. Oh, the irony! Don't like how animals are being pumped full of hormones? Cool, want to starve to death? If you're going to complain about animal treatement, you better not complain about food prices, because they are going to skyrocket.
Despite all of the wonders technology has given us for free, we think the world is going to hell. What is considered "good" must have a reference to compare to - and if our entire lives are lived in this amazing period of history where the combined human knowledge is accessible to anybody in the matter of 5 seconds, it's hard to be impressed and happy at anything.
The media is turning our kids into zombies! As Marilyn Manson said during the Clinton era - "The president dropped more bombs during the day of Columbine than any other day so far, yet I'm the bad guy because I sing a few rock-and-roll songs. Who do you think has more influence on children? I'd like to think me, but I'm going to go with the president." Somewhere, I think, there is a shift in blame, a reluctance to accept responsibility. Instead of parents being horrible parents, it's the media. No, it's NOT the media. You make the media. Video games were supposed to turn the next generation into murdering psychopaths. Before that, rock-n-roll and the sexual revolution. Before that, television and radio. It seems that every single generation is more doomed than the next. Yet this is far from the case.
The next generation will be smarter and more moral than us. There will be less crime, more techonology, more acceptance. We've nuked a huge chunk of racism, sexism, and slavery. Strides are made to chip away at homophobia. The future is in the future generations, and they will be infinitely more useful and valuable than us. Perhaps older generations have a hard time accepting that. The next generation will stand on our shoulders, from the work we've done to acheive greater things. Of this, I am actually optimistic, which is out-of-character for me.
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ReplyDelete"Statistics don't lie." But statisticians do, lol. And survey-collectors DO select for biased demographics, based on funding. :D
ReplyDeleteTrue - parents control child exposure to media. Media alone cannot be blamed, and entertainers almost surely not at all. Broadcast companies can be blamed for propagandist material presented on their stations (consider WWI, WWII & the Cold War - all utilizing broadcast media for propaganda - and now Iraq, with military service rabidly endorsed by movies & games, and the sordid glorification of war & battle in films), but again - parents control children's exposure & reaction to these things, so the point stands.
"The next generation will be smarter and more moral than us." Maybe. But maybe they'll just be better educated? Intelligence is defined in many different ways, and what is certain is that our brains are changing (becoming faster, diversified - but also less focused, with diminishing recollection ability), and survival skills atrophy in a leisure society, while white-color skills flourish in populations above the poverty line.
But what if the cost of education continues to rise? What do you think about this?
I mean, my counter-thesis to your statement, "the world isn't turning to shit" is that the world is subject to cyclical patterns of crappiness that wax and wane based on eras, and are slowly trending toward improvement & progress overall. But maybe the U.S. is turning to creepiness, and maybe the environment will annihilate us before human civilization can wax progressive into sufficient sustainability.
Your thoughts?
Steven Pinker has a good video on this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk
We often view our past with rose-tinted glasses. Personal experience but a little removed from the subject: I see it a lot in gaming, Everybody thinks the MMORPG they played was at its best when they first started, and then later the game got crapped on by the developers. This may or may not be the case but a large part is our attitudes which shifted... Instead of screwing around and having fun, it become more of a grind, to level up and be the best and do more damage than the guy next to you. Times were simpler back then because we were younger. I see it with all the games; the kids that grew up with Final Fantasy 7 before me, they were all attached, then they hate on the new Final Fantasies, because they grew up with the old. So now we're older and life is more complex and now it's drab... but I think a part of that is again our attitudes. We're expected more from us but we are capable of so much more, and happiness and a better outlook on life isn't too much to ask for.
That just popped into my head just because.
IQ scores go up but is IQ score a measure of intelligence? Well it's harder to seperate education from intelligence in some respects I feel... maybe a correct and efficient pursuit of knowledge actually boosts your ability to retain and apply information. But yse on average the world is being more and more educated. For this I am an optimist.
The Cost of education... Well I also think about the poor and ignorant, right. Who still think going to the Shaman will fix their illness. We have less of that than 300 years ago. More of a general awareness, that's the first step. I think regardless of whether education cost rises or not, a greater access to technology allows us to surf information and be more informed generally. Now whether people choose to be informed or not... But even then I feel justified in being optimistic as the trend so far shows. I find it hard to imagine a future where the people there know less and are more stupid than us on average.
But more than that, it is a broad view of the future, not a short-termed one. In the short term, things can get better or worse, but in the long term I'm convinced it'll be better. An economy has the market cycle, the peaks and troughs. But on average are we all richer/more able to feed ourselves than 300 years ago? Yes.