People often say our society is getting dumber, more infantile and more immoral. I’d even say it’s the most popular view among ordinary people. Yet plenty of research says the opposite. We’re getting healthier, better educated and smarter. Steven Pinker, for example, talks about this in a popular TED talk, citing statistics. True, he doesn’t really explain why it’s happening. So the facts are there, but most people believe the opposite.
I’ve come up with a few possible reasons for this.
1. The media and social media have incentives to present a distorted picture of reality. This applies more to social media, and they’ve already dragged traditional media down the same slippery slope. The media struggle to find ways to make money, get hooked on traffic and get drawn into a war for the lead in moral panic.
2. Progress has no advocates. Nobody will vote for you if your political slogan is “Everything’s fine, we keep working our fucking asses off, and maybe things will be easier for our great-grandchildren, but don’t quote me on that”. Political rhetoric is always built on setting yourself against the establishment and criticizing the existing order.
3. A conservative attitude to the world let us survive and evolve. Those who weren’t afraid of the unfamiliar and didn’t find it disgusting didn’t survive. Conditions have changed, and poisonous snakes no longer lie in wait for us in the tall grass, but the brain changes much more slowly than living conditions and hasn’t had time to adapt. The feeling that society is growing more immoral comes from the same place, I think.
4. Technology arrived too fast. The speed of technological progress, and of the changes in how society is organized that follow from it, outpaces our ability to adapt psychologically to new conditions. The result is stress and confusion about how to survive in the new world. And the media and social networks cash in on this, making the problem worse.
We need a new discourse and new leaders. Leadership in the style of Greta Thunberg is a belch from the old world. She says “you’re all fucking awful, shame on you!”.
The new leaders will help us cope with progress, cyborgization and changes in the forms of employment without condemnation and moralizing, with care and an understanding of the situation a person finds themselves in. The new leader will tell you:
“You’re fine. The world isn’t going to hell, it only seems that way to you. I know everyone around you says the same. It seems that way to them too. Like the lurch in your stomach on a roller coaster. You’re on a roller coaster all the time, that’s just how it turned out. You’ll have to learn to live with it.”
The new leaders will remember the hardships previous generations went through and will stop denying what they achieved. Rejecting traditions is necessary for fast social change, but we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The new leader has a long memory and respect for the giants. He builds his rhetoric on gratitude to his ancestors and an understanding of their role in history. To change the world, you need firm ground to stand on. The growing popularity of conservative ideologies shows that society is asking for this.