Is This the Best Humanity Can Do?

This Age’s Lesson For — and Warning to — the World

Image Credit: Patrick Record, follow him here. 

Here’s a tiny thought that’s been crossing my mind. If this is the best humanity can do…

Let me explain what I mean backwards.

There’s a phenomenon strikes me recently. Recurrent and predictable as the tides. Whatever happens, no matter how toxic, terrible, or horrible, we’re told it doesn’t matter. Climate change? No big deal! Maybe it’s not even real! Inequality spiking past Roman levels? Ah, who cares! The robots will save us! People losing their dignity, self-respect, and self-worth, thanks to a self-destructive way of life eating away at their meaning, purpose, and strength? It’s their fault! They need to be more ruthless, cruel, and careless. Hold on — democracy’s falling apart, because we asked people to be like that. So what?! The world’s getting better, dumbo!!!!

So off we go to work. What do we work on? What do we think about? Where does our attention, energy, time, effort, and imagination go? Well, it doesn’t go towards the things that should concern us — because, apparently, they don’t matter. So what does? The trivial. The inconsequential. The pointless. Shortening delivery windows from four hours to two. Making more money for hedge-fund bots to disappear into offshore accounts. Racking up more clicks, eyeballs, views, to sell people ads.

Where do we end up as societies? We end up with all the stuff on my first list. Extremists running our societies. Inequality. Predators at the top of our economies. Authoritarianism. Social collapse. Economic stagnation. Cultural perversion, falsehood posing as truth, and vice preaching itself as virtue. Political implosion — “sides” that don’t care much about it all. Where do we end up as people? Miserable, ashamed, anxiety-ridden, panic-attacked, and impoverished, not just of money, but of meaning, purpose, and happiness.

Nothing that should matter matters, and very little that matters actually does. Is it any result that life today seems so futile, meaningless, empty, and hollow? That so many are turning to drugs, whether they’re opiates, addictive forms of technology, money, or power? That loneliness and depression and anxiety and despair are endemic?