I agree with most of this post, especially the last 2 paragraphs. I would say I think our weaknesses have always been there, modern information transmission just makes the flaws in us more obvious.
Hot take alert: Humans are stupid. We've always been stupid. Our brains simply do not have the capacity - in either long term memory or in throughput - to deal with real life.
To deal with this we have always simplified as much as we can.
Sometimes that means putting things into boxes: "Good" or "Bad", "Left" or "Right", "Rich" or "Poor", "Healthy" or "Unhealthy". Reality is always very murky, but simple boxes like this help us to make decisions quickly.
If we did not do this, you could spend a century deciding what to have for breakfast! Thinking about all the aspects - the companies involved and the way they treat their employees, the effect of various industries on the environment and economy, the various nutrients and how they interact with the rest of your diet, the long-term cost, whether it is sufficient variety, how long it takes to eat and whether time is a factor, how hard it is to clean up after, etc, etc.
Just eating breakfast could turn into nearly endless debate and back and forth if you really explored it.
The reality is, humans are not equipped to deal with reality's level of nuance. So, we take mental shortcuts. We place things into boxes. We make assumptions. We build simple hierarchies so we only need to know about what's below and above. (Part of what governments and companies are structured the way they are)
This is not a modern phenomenon - it has always been true about us. However, now there is much more information blasted at us constantly. Our very limited mental resources are more taxed, so we need to start making more assumptions, taking more shortcuts, simplifying things down more.
A lot of people would point to our technology as evidence otherwise, but I think that's a bit false. We only make real technological progress by having large groups of people slam their head against one tiny aspect of a problem for nearly their entire lives. Sometimes we get lucky and get breakthroughs, but that's the exception and not the rule IMO. These days it can take a good third of our lifetimes just to get familiar with the problem we're trying to solve. It's just not sustainable. Our brains are too weak.
Hot take alert: Humans are stupid. We've always been stupid. Our brains simply do not have the capacity - in either long term memory or in throughput - to deal with real life.
To deal with this we have always simplified as much as we can.
Sometimes that means putting things into boxes: "Good" or "Bad", "Left" or "Right", "Rich" or "Poor", "Healthy" or "Unhealthy". Reality is always very murky, but simple boxes like this help us to make decisions quickly.
If we did not do this, you could spend a century deciding what to have for breakfast! Thinking about all the aspects - the companies involved and the way they treat their employees, the effect of various industries on the environment and economy, the various nutrients and how they interact with the rest of your diet, the long-term cost, whether it is sufficient variety, how long it takes to eat and whether time is a factor, how hard it is to clean up after, etc, etc.
Just eating breakfast could turn into nearly endless debate and back and forth if you really explored it.
The reality is, humans are not equipped to deal with reality's level of nuance. So, we take mental shortcuts. We place things into boxes. We make assumptions. We build simple hierarchies so we only need to know about what's below and above. (Part of what governments and companies are structured the way they are)
This is not a modern phenomenon - it has always been true about us. However, now there is much more information blasted at us constantly. Our very limited mental resources are more taxed, so we need to start making more assumptions, taking more shortcuts, simplifying things down more.
A lot of people would point to our technology as evidence otherwise, but I think that's a bit false. We only make real technological progress by having large groups of people slam their head against one tiny aspect of a problem for nearly their entire lives. Sometimes we get lucky and get breakthroughs, but that's the exception and not the rule IMO. These days it can take a good third of our lifetimes just to get familiar with the problem we're trying to solve. It's just not sustainable. Our brains are too weak.