Sounds like you have some skills I have yet to develop, or at least to trust the skills I do have. I've been leaving so many people behind, anyone I didn't feel very clearly safe with.

The skill I'm speaking about is the ability to sense the collective energy of an environment.

If people are usually tense/uptight/nervous/etc, I will feel this way in an environment, in an empathic way and it's very uncomfortable. This ignites my fight/flight response, and flight is preferred to me if it's not a matter of defending territory. If the opposite is true, I'm very relaxed and can feel the warmth of happy positive emotions and it overtakes me in a good way. No words need to be exchanged between me and anyone else for this energetic occurrence to happen.

I'm not sure what you are asking there. The current rage to pin things down, as if truth were always a fixed thing, has crippled our imaginations and our powers. Science that is not in flux, not always reconsidered and questioned, is not science to my mind.

I'm asking if you feel like people have become more unpredictable and/or toxic due to the recent changes with technology. The topic of science is interesting when one has the capacity to clearly identify good sciences vs harmful sciences. Some medicine practice could be classified in a harmful scientific category.

"The science is settled!" haha , this is true for the boiling point of water and such, but..

To me the definition of science is to be objective with the results and search for alternate or more replicable results for the better. With some things it's not really necessary, like the boiling point of water. We know where that heat range is and what point would it make to contest it or try to find differentiating evidence?

So I wonder how your body reacts to the nature of the crowd when you first enter the space.

As someone who's performed on stage in front of people (both of us), I find that my ability to perform in front of people with relative ease does not carry over into other social settings where I am more of a quiet observer at first.

If you think about all of this stuff when you go to the park however, it may detract from the whole point of going.