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Your comment about the rabid consumption of fiction these days hits home for me personally. In this "golden age" of television, with more high quality entertain

Your comment about the rabid consumption of fiction these days hits home for me personally. In this "golden age" of television, with more high quality entertainment than anyone can possibly consume, I've begun to feel that my media consumption is more compulsive escapism than casual enjoyment. I find Pitirim Sorokin's classification of societies as either ideational (spiritual) or sensate (materialistic) helpful in understanding where we are. I strongly believe the evidence points to our modern civilization being in the late stages of sensate decline. Science and technology has brought enormous benefits to the world but has utterly devastated the individual dignity of man, leaving only meaningless pleasures to provide any motivation for living. I think we will soon (100 years?) see a cultural shift back towards immaterial values and purposes higher than the satisfaction of our sensory desires. The question in my mind is whether that shift happens before or after our current civilization destroys itself.

api 9y ago
> utterly devastated the individual dignity of man I smell survivorship bias. Have the masses of humanity ever had dignity? In the distant past the peasantry were largely illiterate, so nothing of them survives. What we get are a lot of stories written by upper class literate people suggesting that they had dignity and meaning. In the more recent past they lacked access to broadcast media or television stations, so very little of them survives. What we get is again a lot of survivorship bias. Now they all have Internet connections and can fill cyberspace with their cries for help, so now we say "hey, why are all these people so unhappy?" History is one consistent story of wars over nothing, constant crime and drama, and escapism through sex, drugs, entertainment, and religion-used-as-opiate. Those are things that people who lack a sense of dignity or purpose do to pass the time until they die.
- kldavis4 9y ago
  when I talk about the devastation of human dignity, I am referring to a distinct worldview that robs us of agency and purpose, that says we have no free will and no purpose as individuals other than to seek out our immediate happiness and pleasure. You can see that worldview in the response to this article by some who suggest that it is not necessarily a bad thing that the people who abuse opioids are dying in such high numbers, that they are self-selecting out of society and society is better off for it. I agree, that there have always been selfish and cruel people who exploit others for their own purposes and human suffering has always existed. And yes, people have always sought escape from that suffering in some fashion. We are in a unique point in human history, though, where there are so many people living at a high material standard, but utterly divorced from any sense of higher purpose or meaning. That is the existential question that we desperately need to answer.

api 9y ago

> utterly devastated the individual dignity of man I smell survivorship bias. Have the masses of humanity ever had dignity? In the distant past the peasantry were largely illiterate, so nothing of them survives. What we get are a lot of stories written by upper class literate people suggesting that they had dignity and meaning. In the more recent past they lacked access to broadcast media or television stations, so very little of them survives. What we get is again a lot of survivorship bias. Now they all have Internet connections and can fill cyberspace with their cries for help, so now we say "hey, why are all these people so unhappy?" History is one consistent story of wars over nothing, constant crime and drama, and escapism through sex, drugs, entertainment, and religion-used-as-opiate. Those are things that people who lack a sense of dignity or purpose do to pass the time until they die.

kldavis4 9y ago
when I talk about the devastation of human dignity, I am referring to a distinct worldview that robs us of agency and purpose, that says we have no free will and no purpose as individuals other than to seek out our immediate happiness and pleasure. You can see that worldview in the response to this article by some who suggest that it is not necessarily a bad thing that the people who abuse opioids are dying in such high numbers, that they are self-selecting out of society and society is better off for it. I agree, that there have always been selfish and cruel people who exploit others for their own purposes and human suffering has always existed. And yes, people have always sought escape from that suffering in some fashion. We are in a unique point in human history, though, where there are so many people living at a high material standard, but utterly divorced from any sense of higher purpose or meaning. That is the existential question that we desperately need to answer.