Navigating the modern world

Introduction

The first thing I will do creating a blog is to admit that I do not claim to have any answers; I do not know how the world works, and most of the questions in your mind before and after reading this article, I also have, and I have no answers in mind.

Instead, what we will do here is create a journey that you and I will go through together, discovering some information and asking some questions, some of which might be answered, and some will linger unanswered, possibly forever.
Sometimes, you choose the most comfortable answer, not the true answer. Do with that what you might.

Bringing back into focus the title of the article, “Navigating the modern world”, there seems to be a consensus that modern life vastly differs from what our ancestors went through. It seems this is the only time in human history where we do not have a frame of reference. It feels like with the technological boom, we are facing unprecedented changes that will force us to behave in ways never before experienced by humans, and on some level, we envy older generations for “having figured it out”.

But is it true? Or is it simply the way our brains are perceiving reality?

how the world today is very different

The short answer is, yes, the world today is unique and extremely different from anything we have ever lived as a human race.

The world today has incredibly increased in complexity. The rapid advancement of technology, globalization, and the constant influx of information can overwhelm people.

If we want to put things in perspective, there was very little change that we can mention in the 300000 years of homo sapiens’ existence1; life has relatively stayed the same; evolution is slow enough that if you take a homo sapiens who lived thousands of years ago, and you raise them today, you wouldn’t notice any significant difference. Our biological composition has stayed the same, so our instincts and brains still think the same way as our ancestors, who lived thousands of years ago. But since the dawn of civilization, human life has known immense change, which is even more prominent in the past 200 years, more precisely, since the Industrial Revolution2.

We are also living in a world where the technological boom is causing a sensory overload; we are drowning in social comparison, where social media3 and other forms of communication expose people to a wide range of lifestyles and achievements, which can lead to feelings of inadequacy and confusion. The choices in the old times were more limited, social mobility4 was practically unheard of, and so, in most cases, people pretty much knew what they would grow up to be since the day they were born. This abundance of choice can lead to decision fatigue and uncertainty about the “right” choice.

To top this all, the pace of change, or in other words, “the technological boom”56, is creating a sense of instability and difficulty to keep up; in the old times, 90% of the population were farmers, and so only about 10% of the population consisted of everyone else, including scientists, poets, nobility, etc7. This meant that the pace of technological advancement was slow enough for people to adjust to. This didn’t stop people from taking advantage of any advancement; after all, “Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes conquered much of the Eurasian steppe using short bows.”8 still, ordinary people managed to adapt to this change and incorporate it into their lives. And so, people tended to know what they wanted to do with their lives more than our current generation could.
And the icing on the cake is the disconnect from nature that our current generations suffer from. The focus on urban environments and metropolises made people feel disconnected from nature, affecting their well-being.

History and lost souls

Returning to the first point, having a rich history passed down to us puts stress on the human mind. What I see happening is that we see the people who came before having a frame of reference; they see the world around them through the eyes of their ancestors, and they draw wisdom from what the past generations tell them. A common theme I see is, “the people before knew the truth”, which adds to the stress that we feel and the loss we encounter, “the people before had it easy; they knew what was true, and they knew what to do”.

This is a common theme that pops up all across the world; a good percentage of people remain conservative, which is, in all honesty, a respectable opinion; after all, I believe it is the way we are wired as human beings, “what has worked for countless generations is sure to work for me”. This is another area where the normal distribution9 shows up frequently, with 80% of people clustering together (I just pulled that number out of thin air, I don’t know the exact number, but it makes sense).

Suppose we want to put things into perspective. When a person is born, their mind is empty of any meme (I am using “meme” here in the original definition proposed by Richard Dawkins)10. Still, the hardware they are born with is susceptible to accepting the nearest memes being passed on from people in close proximity; this is why most people live and die with the same beliefs as their parents. Now, the problem arises with the evolution of the meme itself; in ancient times, you were only subjected to the memes of the geographical location you were born in, so there was little diversity in the ideas. The mind can “choose” more quickly; now, however, with the rise of globalization, humans are subjected to countless memes and ideas, and the mind is torn between what to choose from. This is one of the reasons for the identity crisis11 that many people go through today.

Are we really uniquely feeling lost

All the evidence shows that our current world is unique in recorded human history. So, it is reasonable to feel lost and need help knowing where to go, given the amount of information we are subjected to.
However;
We are not unique in our feelings of loss.

  • Thomas Jefferson, who lived in the 18 hundreds, wrote about his belief that an agrarian rural society represented a more virtuous and ideal way of life12.
  •  Rousseau, who lived in the 17 hundreds, wrote about the “noble savage”, romanticizing pre-civilized humans as living in a natural simplicity and virtue state13.
  •  Virgil, who died in 19BCE, wrote in his epic poem “The Aeneid” a clear expression of nostalgia for a time when life was simpler14.
  •  Plato, who died in 248 BCE, discussed the degeneration of society over time, suggesting that people in the past had a better understanding of virtue and justice15.
  •  Hesiod, who lived around 700 BCE, also reflected on the challenges he was living in and expressed nostalgia for the “Golden Age” when life was simpler and people lived in harmony.16

If we dig deeper, we find a common theme of idolizing the past. We cling to the notion that people who came before us had it all figured out; they knew what life was all about and mastered the art of living.

But that’s simply not the case.

Due to the nature of life, we only get records of “successful” stories, and again, by natural law, those are abundant people following the norm and feeling stable. Sparkle that with our predisposition to “nostalgia”17, and you get yourself a recipe for dissatisfaction with modern life.

Nostalgia

Instead of focusing on external factors to why we feel like people in the past had it easier, as with almost all of our problems, let’s look inwards.

We can attribute this feeling to nostalgia or romanticizing18 the past1920.
We can attribute nostalgia to several factors.

Selective memory is where we tend only to remember the positives from our past, idealize our past, and continually compare our past to our present.
We all remember our childhood fondly; we all think about how incredible our childhood was and how weirdly children are growing up. Every generation feels the same way; it’s not the past; it’s the memories and how we look at them. When we were children, we had no worries or stress. The world was all brand new, and every moment we had, we were exploring it, mostly feeling safe in the process. It’s no wonder we look fondly at our past; some of us even live in the past, and others spend their entire lives chasing that ghost to no avail.

Somewhere between I want to grow up and I want to be a child again, we grew up

There’s an entire industry out there designed to prey on our nostalgia.

Conclusion

Nobody has it figured out.
That’s it, that’s the whole conclusion I can give you. You can already stop reading the article.

Navigating the modern world, the only thing to remember is that no one has it figured out; we are all just trying to get by.

In the words of my favourite talking horse

We’re all a bunch of stupid, hungry, horny little goons just grabbing at shit, hoping it’ll press that little button in our brain that says, ‘Okay, you’re happy now.’

Bojack Horseman

Some people go through life with a certain iron conviction in their actions; there’s nothing wrong with that. But what has worked for them doesn’t have to work for you. You may not even need to figure out a clear conviction; you can spend the rest of your days going back and forth between ideas, and there’s also nothing wrong with that.

You are not evil for having thoughts.

You are allowed to spend your life searching for your meaning.

You are allowed to spend your life, the way you see fit.

Citations

  1. An Evolutionary Timeline of Homo Sapiens, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/essential-timeline-understanding-evolution-homo-sapiens-180976807/ ↩︎
  2. Industrial Revolution, https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/Industrial-Revolution/The-first-Industrial-Revolution ↩︎
  3. The Social Dilemma: Social Media and Your Mental Health, https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/it-or-not-social-medias-affecting-your-mental-health ↩︎
  4. Understanding social mobility, https://www.oecd.org/stories/social-mobility ↩︎
  5. Expanding Entire Volume of Knowledge Influences on Incrementing
    Individual Knowledge, https://globaljournals.org/GJHSS_Volume19/5-Expanding-Entire-Volume-of-Knowledge.pdf ↩︎
  6. the-technological-revolution, https://web.archive.org/web/20230610171752/https://www.fpri.org/article/2008/07/the-technological-revolution/ ↩︎
  7. Harari, Y. N. (2014). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. United Kingdom: Random House. ↩︎
  8. History of Archery and the NAA, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/olympics/longterm/archery/archhist.htm ↩︎
  9. what is the normal distribution, https://statisticsbyjim.com/basics/normal-distribution/ ↩︎
  10. what is a meme, https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195120905.001.0001/acref-9780195120905-e-187 ↩︎
  11. Our modern identity crisis, https://www.liberty.edu/ace/articles/our-modern-identity-crisis/ ↩︎
  12. Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. Penguin Books, 1998. ↩︎
  13. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Dover Publications, 2004. ↩︎
  14. Virgil. The Aeneid of Virgil. Toronto ; New York :Bantam Books, 1981 ↩︎
  15. Plato. Plato’s The Republic. New York :Books, Inc., 1943. ↩︎
  16. Hesiod. Theogony ; and, Works and Days. Oxford [Oxfordshire] ; New York :Oxford University Press, 1988. ↩︎
  17. what is nostalgia, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nostalgia ↩︎
  18. romanticizing meaning, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/romanticizing ↩︎
  19. why we romanticize the past, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/smarter-living/why-we-romanticize-the-past.html ↩︎
  20. How to stop romanticizing the past, https://www.self.com/story/stop-romanticizing-past ↩︎