...why, for example, there is so much profound discontent, depression, drug abuse, despair, addiction, and loneliness in the most advanced liberal societies. His response to the sixth great mass extinction of the Earth’s species at the hands of humans is to propose that better environmental technology will somehow solve it — just as pharmaceuticals will solve unhappiness. His general view is that life is simply a series of “problems” that reason can “solve” — and has solved. What he doesn’t fully grapple with is that this solution of problems definitionally never ends; that humans adjust to new standards of material well-being and need ever more and more to remain content; that none of this solves the existential reality of our mortality; and that none of it provides spiritual sustenance or meaning. In fact, it might make meaning much harder to attain, hence the trouble in modern souls.
...humans in the last 500 years (and most intensely in the last century) have created a world utterly different than the one humans lived in for close to 99 percent of our time on the planet. We are species built on tribe; yet we live increasingly alone in societies so vast and populous our ancestors would not recognize them; we are a species designed for scarcity and now live with unimaginable plenty; we are a species built on religious ritual to appease our existential angst, and yet we now live in a world where every individual has to create her own meaning from scratch; we are a species built for small-scale monocultural community and now live increasingly in multiracial, multicultural megacities
I have never seen such an astonishingly rapid ascent without an equally sudden decline, a return to the mean. Maybe I’m just a doomsayer. But it takes a remarkably sturdy set of blinkers to think it’s an impossibility.
Sullivan: Things Are Better Than Ever. Why Are We Miserable?
I just think that man's success in dominating the earth can put a strain on earth's limited resources and eventually lead to man's ultimate failure. What really is at more imminent risk of doom are many non human animal species as humanity keeps taking away their environment or hunts them to extinction. I don't think it has anything to do with how man is "built". If man was not built for technological advancement we would not be doing it.
We may be "built" for tech advancement, but it's highly probable that those advancements outpace our ability to cope with them. One does have to ask why man is so tormented in such an unprecedented time of plenty.
Hey, welcome back!Hi Calamity...I'm back...lol...good to find you still here.
I believe it is man's nature to be tormented regardless of technology or plenitude. We search for "meaning" for our existence. Those who find it cast away the torment and those who do not continue to suffer "if they are aware enough to identify a lack".
Hey, welcome back!
The article briefly touches on what I believe is key--we humans are aware of our morality. That we know we will die is a bitter pill to swallow. And, knowing we will be dying slowly (old age) may be the most bitter pill of all.
That's actually new--most of us living long enough to die slowly and having plenty of time to think about it. I've said it before, perhaps dying young, via tragic event, beats hanging around until 90. Of course, I prefer making it to 90. But that is the true paradox.
I applaud the OP. I think it raises an important question. The reply I'm about to give is in no manner a criticism of the OP. It is a criticism of assumptions we all make, assumptions all of Mankind share.Ok, so far, we who are alive today are the luckiest of generations---we've experienced nothing but the rise. Access to information, education, increased life expectancy, standards of living, access to food, housing, healthcare, etc. all of it on the rise....
I applaud the OP. I think it raises an important question. The reply I'm about to give is in no manner a criticism of the OP. It is a criticism of assumptions we all make, assumptions all of Mankind share.
Mankind's self-concept -- whether as just below the angels in The Great Chain of Being or as "the luckiest of generations" in the long march of generations -- is the underlying assumption for both our expectation of happiness and the disappointment of that expectation, the apparent paradox of our unhappiness. Is the happy leper a moral contradiction or simply a contradiction in terms invented by us?
That the happiness of Mankind is an issue at all derives from the narcissistic assumption of a privileged position in the grand scheme of things. There are three albino rhinos left on earth; do you imagine that the albino rhino is bemoaning its fate? Do you imagine that the elephant laments the extinction of the albino rhino?
So where does Mankind get this notion of privilege? Clearly it is part of a story we tell about ourselves. Man appears to be the only living thing that tells stories. And how do we come by this capacity -- if it is not indeed an incapacity -- to tell stories? It seems to be related to a unique form of consciousness that permits and promotes symbolization.
So how is symbolization related to our expectation of happiness?
Once Mankind, through its story about itself, becomes a symbol, then it is no longer itself merely -- it stands for something else. It is no longer merely animal; it is animal plus something more.
In the ancient and medieval story of The Great Chain of Being, Man's place was between beast and angel.
In the Enlightenment story that replaced that old story, Man is a secular angel in the vanguard of Progress.
In the modern scientific story, Man is just a beast.
So, to return to the OP question: Millennial Man, as a consequence of his own story revisions over time, suffers from a Cosmic Identity Crisis.
A beast with angelic aspirations in a confused story in need of major revision.
We may be "built" for tech advancement, but it's highly probable that those advancements outpace our ability to cope with them. One does have to ask why man is so tormented in such an unprecedented time of plenty.
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