The
Downside
of Living in the Information Age |
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Why
is the average person's proportion of time spent in the
Stress State is so much greater than the time spent in the
Effectiveness State? Was it always this way? Is every species
like this?
Other species we observe
do not appear to have this same syndrome.
Our hypothesis is
that our culture has outraced our brain evolution.
Body parts evolve
over millions of years - including the brain.
But
the current civilization has arisen in only the last 6000
years. Before that we have no writing. Writing was the first
shock of accelerated brain processing that leapt ahead of
the physical evolution of the brain's capabilities - we
hypothesize.
Humans,
being primates, use sight as our lead sense. Cats and dogs
use smell as their lead sense. Language itself was a leap,
but making language visible to our lead sense was - we hypothesize
- galvanizing to us as primates. Writing changed the way
we think.
We
started to think more analytically, seeing things in parts,
and imagining recombining those parts in new ways.
In
the million years leading up to the start of writing we
invented a few things - use of fire, use of rocks and wood
as tools and weapons, and the wheel. Since the start of
writing we have been inventing new things at ever-increasing
speed. Today we invent more new things in a day than we
invented in millions of years before 6000BC.
Things
are quite literally coming at us faster and faster each
day. We need new mental and emotional tools with which to
come to grips with this now-unavoidable situation.
We
call these tools Solution Stimuli. They jog the mind to
work in new ways, to adapt faster to changes taking place
on the outside of our selves - in the exterior world. We
must become more athletic in the interior world to deal
effectively with the exterior world as it has become.
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