The world is facing rapid change and not without consequences
2024-02-22
We are living in the 21th century, a time of unprecedented innovation and challenges, which simultaneously fuels our brightest hopes and backs our worst fears. This situation is rightfully too much for many people due to one-sided and exaggerated media coverage, the sheer amount and pace of new information as well as so many more factors - with meaningful consequences for us as a society. In this article I want to share some thoughts on the changes we are seeing, their impact on the average citizen and the resulting effects...
In a nutshell, globalization and the rapid development of digital instant communication all across the globe in the second half of the last century has not only lead to a more connected and interdependent world , but also one with much greater complexity and enormously accelerated affairs . Once you start thinking about it, there really is no way around this conclusion - and for the most part is has a positive influence on our lifes. With well connected global leaders, interwoven economies and a global audience observing international politics, wars and escalating conflicts have become much more costly for those in charge and thus less likely (unless certain leaders just don't care about the effects of their actions). The internet has (for the most part) allowed free exchange of information and thus not only empowered those who are interested to access plurastic media and build an informed opinion, but also enabled researchers from distant countries to work together on new discoveries, spread results faster than ever and overall accelerate research and developent. And there are many more examples across all fields of life, including but not limited to politics, economics, science, culture and nature.
Nonetheless, not everything is positive, new problems have emerged, old ones became much more relevant and just the broad scope of changes alone can be a cause of existential crisis for many individuals. Just give it a thought for a moment, you're working in low- oder middle-class job to keep your family above the water, have to deal with everyday struggles and chores and seamingly out of nowhere all of this additional complexity approaches you - wouldn't you feel afraid as well? I sometimes do, especially since everything seems to be so rapid these days and I just can't think of a way to change something as a single person. But crucially I also know how to deal with these fears of overwhelm and powerlessness , have an open surrounding to talk about them and the time as well as media literacy to get down to the much less frightening academic truth of most things.
This struggle only becomes dangerous, once you stop searching for the often times really unfortunately complicated truth - like so many average citizens do these days, because they are already stressed out by their everyday lifes to such an extent that they can't possibly handle the additional load of dealing with world affairs in a responsible way. This departure from the complicated reality is really dangerous, since it opens the door for acceptance of "simpler, alternative answers" and susceptibility to conspiracy theories, populists and bullshitters . We are seeing this phenonemon all over the world with the rise of Donald Trump, who is well known for not caring about the reality and lying left and right as long as he has the authority of interpretation ("Deutungshoheit" in German), a strong trend in politics towards the edges of the spectrum (especially together with a worrying rise of right-wing parties here in Europe) and more people than ever before falling for conspiracy theories during the COVID pandemic. Once a situation gets too out of hand or too complicated for our monkey brains, we just stop to care about what actually happens and tend to withdraw into a simpler illusory world , where Trump might be the strong leader everyone has been waiting for, only extremist ideologies can save the world or all governments of the globe have decided to chip their population for some mysterious reason. It's an evidence of the sad state we are already in, but I feel the need clarify that all of the proposed illusory worlds are obvious bullshit and no one should fall for them.
In the broader picture we are seeing a concerning gain of media influence including so-called "alternative media", facing the risk of our once semi-homogenous societies breaking down into countless hostile ideologic or conspiracy theorie communities and a rise of political leaders, who don't follow a consistent agenda, but only care about getting as much power as possible while following an opportunistic approach to their promises. Luckily, we can fight back against this terrible trend to some extent. Support trustworthy, well-researching media outlets, report accounts and posts sharing bullshit or conspiracy theories and have an eye on friends and family so that none of the people you care about fall for any of this.
With that said, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments down below and have a lovely day...