Experiential avoidance isn’t a new idea. Humans have a prepotency to ignore their problems vs tackle them head-on. We also like to avoid long term planning.
I am not a fan of many of the current administrations coming into power across the globe, but I do not think that an insidious plan to make us less free thinking/cognitively aware is the primary cause of this wave.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I don’t think there’s a plan either. By “everything that’s happened” I meant just that - things that have happened. Not a plan. The mere fact that this sounds like I’m envisioning a plan just reflects how popular that type of thinking is nowadays. People attribute all kinds of things to heinous plots. Two major things that have happened over the last century are unprecedented comforts and conveniences, and overexposure to fiction.
Technology and well-organized logistics have brought us goods and services our ancestors could only dream of. If we still had their life expectations we could be living lives of comparative ease, with all kinds of spare income and free time. But in parallel with new toys that eliminate various survival needs we’ve also developed erxpectationa that make us want/need to consume more and more, so our expenses always stay a little ahead of our incomes.
At the same time entertainment, especially fiction, has become vastly more available than ever in history. We can escape reality in more ways and forms than humans have ever been able to. Cheap book printing, radio, television, and now the internet have made fictional characters and their lives seem so vivid and real to us, they’re part of our vision of how we’re supposed to be and how life should be. This leads to all kinds of disillusion and feelings of inferiority - life just isn’t as exciting, dramatic or entertaining as it should be, based on our fiction-distorted vision.
We’ve become more childlike and incapable. Americans tend to think we inherited “pioneer spirit” - most of us couldn’t pioneer our way out of Walmart. But this wasn’t anybody’s insidious plan, it just happened. We’ve responded to new developments the way we have because apparently that’s how we work. How that turns out is anybody’s guess.
IMALlama@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Now this I totally agree with. Between everything you said above, climate change, and many societies having a birthrate below the replacement rate, it will be very interesting to see how the next century or two plays out. Not that I’ll be around to see it.