There was another mass casualty incident (when did that become a daily term?), this time in Sweden. While the details are sketchy, around ten people have been killed by a shooter at a school that is mostly attended by adults. Mass shootings are pretty rare in these parts thankfully, but I believe that the world will fall apart in the footsteps of the US, and they will increase in frequency.
I think it comes down to the entire cultural ecosystem, one where people have pushed to be unique and differentiated to the point that they don't fit in anywhere. And while this might not be a problem in most cases, because we are polarizing en masse across narrow topics, there are plenty of outliers that get too close to the edge, and break. Emotional resilience must be the lowest it has ever been in the history of humankind.
We have become idiots.
We might have access to the largest collection of data in history, but we are unable to do much with it, because we are increasingly governed by our emotional self. We have evolved over the last few hundred thousand years to have high cognitive skills that can be applied to solve (and create) the problems we face now and in the future, but we end up debasing it in favour of emotional reaction. And, we are choosing to do this willingly, because it is "more fun" to act emotionally than rationally.
Making it easier also.
At least in the short term, it is more fun and easier, where we do what we want, eat what we want, go where we want, buy what we want - until we are in a world we don't want to be in. Our condition degrades, society becomes more violent, and we are constantly struggling indebted to our desires. We end up living lives we are trying to escape, avoiding the problems we face by diving deeper into the abundance of entertainment available to keep us occupied so we don't have to think, but emotionally engaged so we are more prone to react.
There are a million reasons given for why someone breaks down enough to kill others, but is there a good one? Essentially, all of these mass casualty events have become akin to a "crime of passion" where it is the emotional self that is unable to cope with daily reality, and snaps. The fragility of emotional state these days means that an increasing number are close to the edge and it is taking less and less for them to cross that line and go over.
Couple this with the mass desire for something akin to religious meaning, catalysed by online communities and siloed groups that provide a sense of identity, and a place to call home amongst uninvested strangers who have similar interests, and it becomes a breeding ground for extremism. And we are seeing it playing out near daily around the world, in thousands of different ways.
I don't know what the solution is at scale, but at the individual level it is pretty easy to build emotional resilience, but it is uncomfortable to do it. All one really needs to be open to is that discomfort, and through exposure and repetition, the emotional muscle memory will build. Yet, we have set up an economy and culture that makes it far easier to avoid discomfort, because there are still some people using their brains as evolution intended to create, but they are creating more places for escape, not growth.
Justified by the profits of course.
Maybe every generation feels this, but I think that on average, we are getting stupider as individuals, because we are less capable of applying what we know, or learning what we could know. We are very good at finding ways not to do things, even if what we end up doing has little value to even ourselves, other than taking up some time and making us feel like we are relevant. Yet, the only relevance most of us have to the world is, how much money can be extracted from us.
If anything is to change for the better, we need to reverse the trend and start to increase our practical intelligence, rather than increasing the trivia we consume. But, that isn't fun, is it? So, most likely, the majority of us will keep getting less capable, and minority will find it easier and easier to extract the little value we have, until there is nothing left. And a lot of emotional people will break along the way, setting off a chain reaction that might be unstoppable.
The biggest hurdles we face, are ourselves.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
