Evolution - where have we got to and what has been the impact – Part 2

In Part 1 I wrote about nine ways in which I believe we humans have evolved, or to put it another way, nine issues I believe we need to address if we are to actually evolve. A reminder of them are: -

1. Degenerative Approach to life and those around us – Individualism, Competition, Lack of Solidarity, Endless Targets, Growing Distrust, Managed Exploitation, a ‘Fix You’ Mentality, Imbalanced Lifestyle, Pointless Priorities, Constant Measurements, Misplaced Ambitions, Misogyny and ‘The Binary Mindset’

2. Growing Isolation and Disconnect with one another – disconnection, loneliness and ‘safetyism’

3. Increasing Acceleration and our inability to keep up – erosion of the ‘Four second rule,’ adaptation and invasiveness

4. A Pervasive Collective Narcissism – growth in the ‘Attention Economy’ and Insecure Narcissism

5. Increasing levels of Stress – Fragility, Decreasing Resilience and Pervasive Technology

6. Addiction to Screens – ‘Screen Time’ and ‘Magical Promises’

7. Dilution of our Mental Capacity – lack of Critical Thinking, Information Overload and Fixed Mindset

8. Decreasing levels of meaningful engagement with others – Restricted Childhoods and Modern Disorders

9. Illusion Vs Reality – Sexualisation of Young People

Below, I go into more detail on these issues and attempt to articulate the challenges that make up these nine issues.

1 Degenerative Approach to life and those around us

Individualism: the emergence of ‘the individual’ - the more advanced and industrialised an economy, the more individualistic the culture - and thus the faster the country’s speed.[i]

Competition: life is dominated by competition rather than co-operation – we have been led to believe that we are naturally competitive rather than our true self which through extensive research has revealed that we are actually co-operative beings.

Lack of Solidarity: the loss of the idea that we should care for, or support people in a way that put their needs first or at least on an equal footing with our - Our tendency is to stop seeing ourselves as people striving together to overcome our common problems - and to view ourselves instead as people striving against each other to overcome individual problems.[ii]

Endless Targets: we focus much more on results than efforts – we have been convinced that outcomes are more important than process or experience even though research has shown, particularly in terms of outcomes for young people, that process is more important than results.

Growing Distrust: breakdown of trust in traditional institutions, e.g., churches, politics, media, etc – the result has been a lack of faith in experts and in the era, we are now in, we have seen how this is hampering efforts to deal with many of the real challenges all our species face – health and climate change only being two of the most prominent in recent years.

Managed Exploitation: viewing humans as a commodity in the shape of data to be manipulated - ‘the more we see the human being as a technology to be enhanced, the greater the danger of applying this same market ethos to people and extending our utility value at the expense of others.’[iii]

‘Fix You’ Mentality: the popularity of alternative medicines and treatments, e.g., back to nature living, various niche organic foods, homeopathies, vitamin therapies, detoxifications, etc grows year after year, even when scientific studies fail to support them.[iv]

Imbalanced Lifestyle: living to work, rather than working to live – we are harder workers, shorter sleepers, and faster thinkers.[v]

Pointless Priorities: expending energy on things that don’t meet our expectations - people are prepared to sacrifice their personal happiness today in order to invest in potential happiness in the future.[vi]

Constant Measurements: setting ourselves up for disappointments by choosing the wrong measures to judge success by - most people tend to measure their life in terms of success or failures, and their successes and failures in terms of possessions and wealth…..[yet] most people rate their relationships with their family and friends as the most important things to them.[vii]

Misplaced Ambitions: not every solution has to be technological - the computer power needed to create one bitcoin consumes at least as much electricity as the average American household burns through in two years.[viii]

Misogyny: our collective failure to address why we blame women for everything and continue to deny them equality of opportunity - A 2015 McKinsey Report entitled The Power of Poverty, found that by closing the gender pay gap and unleashing the full power of women, an additional $12 trillion could be added to the global GSP.

The ‘binary mindset’: - the internet does not entertain conversation, discussion or negotiation…it merely offers an either / or approach where polarisation has grown.

2 Growing Isolation and Disconnect with one another

Disconnection: we are at our most connected we have ever been, yet we have an epidemic of loneliness - according to the WHO [World Health Organisation], depression has even become the biggest health problem among teens and will be the number one cause of illness worldwide by 2030.[ix]

Loneliness: has led to major health issues - loneliness (involuntary isolation)…[it] is strongly associated with depression, paranoia, anxiety, insomnia, fear and health, partly because it enhances production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system.[x]

‘Safetyism’: in today’s culture intent no longer matters - only perceived impact matters now and very little consideration is given to intention when one person aggrieves another.

3 Increasing Acceleration and our inability to keep up

‘Four second rule’: (drawn from a study in 2006 by Akamai Technologies) where people were prepared to wait for up to four seconds for information to download has now been reduced to a quarter of a second[xi] – impatience has become the dominant feature and whereas in the past, people were prepared to wait up to four seconds for info to download this is no longer the case – this is an illustration of where we are prepared to wait much less for things than in days gone by and is reflective of a growing impatience from people in general.

Adaptation: technology is moving faster than we can adapt to it – we do not have (what Rutger Bregman calls) the ‘mental bandwidth’ to keep pace with it.

Invasiveness: Amazon has patented a technology that detects who is speaking at any moment, and gradually develops a profile of their personality and tastes….. this is known as ‘voice-sniffing’ technology. In her book Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshanna Zuboff writes extensively of how there is a growing invasive nature in our everyday lives from technology. She makes the broad point that whilst we can’t reverse the gains that technology has made, we do not have to accept all elements of it, particularly those that gather much of our personal information for the purposes of selling it to third parties in order to exploit us.

4 A Pervasive Collective Narcissism

‘Attention economy’: where everything we put online is designed to get a reaction – but with it, outrage has seemingly become its most potent currency.

Insecure narcissism: – as opposed to a rise in genuine self-esteem caused by an increase in what has been called ‘Social Evaluative Threat.’[xii]

5 Increasing levels of Stress

Fragility: The ‘IGeneration’ (those born between 1995 and 2012) suffers from far higher rates of anxiety and depression than did Millennials at the same age-and higher rates of suicide.[xiii]

Decreasing Resilience: The average student is now more anxious now at the end of their study than at the beginning - by the late 1980s the average American child was more anxious than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s.[xiv]

Pervasive Technology: Twenge [Jean] believes that the rapid spread of smartphones and social media into the lives of teenagers, beginning around 2007, is the main cause of the mental health crisis that began around 2011.[xv]

6 Addiction to Screens

‘Screen Time’: Children and young people now spend much more of their lives in front of a screen – studies have shown that more than 2 hours screen time per day can be damaging.[xvi]

‘Magical Promises’: screens mean kids can always be in control – this raises their level of expectation (about things going their way) but reduces their ability to manage responses that counter this.

7 Dilution of our Mental Capacity

Critical thinking: and the ability to source and critique evidence - the general trend has moved away from acquiring deep knowledge…at a time when there is unprecedented capability for finding the explanation.[xvii]

Information Overload: we now digest much more information than our parents and grandparents but as Herbert Simpson describes, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention[xviii]- it’s estimated that we create 1.7mb of information per second.[xix]

Fixed Mindset: Those unable to contemplate a change in their thinking are locked into a process of proving themselves even against overwhelming evidence.[xx]

8 Decreasing levels of meaningful engagement with others

Restricted childhoods: - younger Millennials and especially members of iGen (born in and after 1995) have been deprived of unsupervised time for play and exploration.[xxi] [xxii]

Modern disorders: Growth in disorders that reduce the capacity to engage with others effectively: are markedly anti-social traits: ADD, ADHD, PDD (Pervasive Development Disorder), AS, SID (Sensory Integration Dysfunction) and ASD….studies have shown that students who spend time alone are less likely to be empathetic.[xxiii]

9 Illusion Vs Reality

Sexualisation of Young People: The ‘removal’ or perhaps the reduction in the length of adolescence as children and young people jump from childhood into an adult world - In the years between 2009 and 2012, 4562 minors committed 5, 028 sex offences in Britain. The children, some of whom were as young as 5, ‘mimicked’ behaviour seen in porn, often viewed online….1/2 of sex offences committed against juveniles in the US are by other children[xxiv]- we like to think that our children and young people are still innocent and/or naïve but the reality is that even at a young age, our children and adolescents are being slowly sexualised.

In my next blog, I look at how we are driven by purpose, its effect and what we can do to improve things for the future.

[i] The Great Acceleration, How The World is Getting Faster, Faster, Robert Colville, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016 [ii] Out of the Wreckage, A New Politics For An Age of Crisis, George Monbiot, Verso, 2017 [iii] Team Human, Douglas Ruskhoff, W.W. Norton & Company, 2019 [iv] Evolving Ourselves, Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans, Oneworld Publications, 2015 [v] The Great Acceleration, How The World is Getting Faster, Faster, Robert Colville, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016 [vi] Laugh Your Way to Happiness, Using the Science of Laughter for Total Well Being, Lesley Lyle, Watkins Publishing Limited, 2014 [vii] Secrets of Happy People, Matt Avery, Teach Yourself, 2014 [viii] Beyond Human Nature, Jesse J. Prinz, W.W.Norton Company, 2012 [ix] Utopia for Realists And How We Got There, Rutger Bregman, Bloomsbury, 2018 [x] Out of the Wreckage, A New Politics For An Age of Crisis, George Monbiot, Verso, 2017 [xi] What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night, John Brockman, Harper Perennial, 2014; The Patience Deficit (Nicholas G. Carr) [xii] Sally Dickenson and Margaret Kemeny, Psychologists, University of California…collected findings from 208 reports of experiments…..Dickinson and Kemeny say, the ‘social self’ which we try to defend ‘reflects one’s esteem and status, and is largely based on others’ perceptions of one’s worth’ [xiii] The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathon Haidt, Allen Lane, 2018 [xiv] Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University…found 269 broadly comparable studies measuring anxiety levels in the USA at various times between 1952 and 1993 [xv] Jean Twenge presents graphs showing that digital media used and mental health problems are correlated: they rose together in recent years [xvi] According to the non-profit organization Common Sense Media, teens spend on average nine hours per day on screens, and eight- to twelve-year-olds spend about six hours [xvii] This will make you smarter, New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking, John Brockman, Transworld Publishers, 2012; Hunting for Root Cause: The Human Black Box (Eric Topol) [xviii] This will make you smarter, New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking, John Brockman, Transworld Publishers, 2012 [xix] How Much Data Is Created Every Day in 2021? [You'll be shocked!] (techjury.net) [xx] Dweck, distinguishes between two mind sets. A fixed mind set [and a] growth mind set…Dweck agrees that those who have a fixed mind set need to constantly prove themselves and confirm to themselves and others their capability [xxi] They have missed out on many of the challenges, negative experiences, and minor risks that help children develop into strong, competent, and independent adults…’ - no opportunity to develop their antifragility [xxii] A study by the University of Michigan comparing results from 1981 with 1997 found that play among kids under 13 went down 16% and much of the play had shifted to indoor activities, often involving a computer and no other children [xxiii] The Organised Mind, Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, Daniel J. Levitin, Viking 2014 [xxiv] More Human, Designing a World Where People Come First, Steve Hilton, W H Allen, 2015