Since the Neolithic, humanity has lived increasingly in environments resulting from its intentions and unintended consequences. As societies have become more complex, we increasingly live in environments that only minimally reflect the environmental context in which we originally evolved and thrived. This has had some profound effects that essentially go unnoticed.
Also, since the Neolithic, humanity has lived increasingly with other animals, not as part of their environment but in some form of captivity. Some of these animals have been domesticated and form a core feature of the adaptations that have allowed us to become the central biological force on our planet. Others have been kept for amusement and education, with contemporary zoos being the main surviving form of this practice.
Animals in zoos have an unusual experience. They find themselves taken from their evolved environment and moved to completely different climates. They are placed within false environments designed by humans based on what the human designers value, not what the animal needs. Food choices become contingent upon what is provided. Survival is primarily ensured through the animal’s threat assessment system, which does not know this and can become hyper-vigilant or completely inactive.
In most cases, after a relatively short time, an animal in captivity will begin displaying behaviors it would never do in its original environment. It will repetitively move around its space, often at precisely the same times daily, retracing steps repeatedly. It will engage in obsessive self-grooming and self-attention, even to the point of causing severe physical harm. It will overeat if allowed or starve itself out of boredom. Depression and anxiety often set in, and in extreme cases, so can acts of self-harm and even suicidal behavior. To treat these things, zoo veterinarians will prescribe anti-depressants and other psychoactive drugs, attempt to create new distractions in the animal’s environment, and try to control and vary food access.
Ever look at what most of your other humans are doing? One day to the next looks fairly the same. Get up at the same time. Walk the same circuit of their homes. Travel to the same places day after day. Some of the largest industries are those dealing with grooming, such as fashion, makeup, and body alteration methods. Very few people know or desire to know where their food comes from and what it does. Instead, they simply overeat or develop other food neurosis. Most humans report feeling depressed or anxious, for which they are prescribed anti-depressants and other psychoactive drugs. Vacation packages or entertainment are provided to help buffer against burnout. Exercise plans and fad diets are a booming industry.
For most of human history, survival was ensured by two different awareness skills. The first was scanning the environment for subtle changes to avoid threats and overcome change blindness. The second was to harness the ability to focus on a single task without distraction. Since the Neolithic, the capacity to focus has become an essential tool for creating our cultures and solving problems that would have been unsolvable otherwise. Unfortunately, the rapid rate of change in our present contexts, brought about in part by the increase of available information sources, is actively undermining the value of both capacities.
With the average person’s survival as ensured at that of a zoo animal, our scanning capacities have turned towards information sources. We are seeing a wave of “disconnection anxiety” where individuals live in fear akin to a survival threat at the idea of being disconnected from their means of communicating with others. We are also seeing new conditions, such as “continual partial attention,” where individuals cannot fully engage in a given moment due to being plugged into communication and information devices.
This condition is not going unnoticed by market forces and businesses. The most significant investments in marketing for the last two decade have been in what is termed “The Attention Economy.” Ways of capturing human attention utilizing subtle threats and then working to direct unfocused awareness have become the primary means of spreading influence aimed at causing people to buy. Rather than telling people about products directly, research into when and where people are most susceptible to play to their anxieties and self-soothing has become the critical tool for marketing products.
Of course, none of this applies to you, only to those other humans.
Of course.
Setemheb 