Dealing with the Psychological Environmental Crisis
We are suffering the effects of a psychological environmental crisis. We are less happy. Insecurity, depression, anxiety, loneliness, and anger are on the rise. One of the driving forces is that we are living in psychologically hostile environments. The arrival of the metaverse, an extremely hostile psychological environment, threatens to create a mental health crisis of unimaginable scale.
There are numerous reasons for our unhappiness, but there is one we seldom discuss. We live in environments that are at odds with our genes. Cities, nations, the economic and free market system, and the metaverse are artificial environments created by man. Those environments keep us safe, well-fed, comfortable, and informed. They increase our life expectancy. Unfortunately, they fill our lives with anxiety, insecurity, conflict, and steal our happiness.
We will be happier if we seek out and spend more time in environments that are compatible with our genes.
Unfortunately, social networks, businesses, the government, and many social institutions are pushing us into the metaverse. Of all the large-scale environments mankind has created, the metaverse is the most pernicious from a psychological point of view.
There is no doubt the metaverse offers us many benefits. It provides us with access to the world’s information instantly and at virtually zero cost. It enables government, business, and our institutions to operate more efficiently. It makes us safer and empowers our law enforcement agencies. But we make a very large mistake when we use it as an environment rather than a tool.
Mankind has many dual-use technologies. A refrigerator is one of them. When we use it as a tool, it greatly improves our standard of living. It enables us to store and preserve our food. None of us would use it as an environment. We would find living on a cramped shelf in a cold dark refrigerator very unappealing.
The metaverse can be used as a tool or an environment. If we are going to avoid the psychological environmental crisis, we must resist the pressures to use the metaverse as an environment and make it serve us as mankind’s most powerful tool.
When we use the metaverse as a tool, we use it to shop, access information, and schedule face-to-face interactions. When we spend endless hours entertaining ourselves on social networks, we are using the metaverse as an environment.
Homo sapiens evolved to live in tribal cultures in a sparsely populated world.
Homo sapiens evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago.[i] They migrated to Europe and the Pacific regions 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.[ii] The world was sparsely populated. There were an estimated 2 million humans in 10,000 BCE.[iii] Humans lived in tribal cultures with populations of around 150 members.[iv]. Tribes enhanced the chances of human survival.
Then humans invented agriculture.
Agriculture emerged independently at several different locations about 12,000 years ago.[v] Agriculture made population concentration possible. The first city, Uruk, emerged in Mesopotamia in 7,500 BC. Cities increased information exchange and the rate of invention. Mankind made rapid technological progress. He invented bronze in 3,300 BC and the Bronze Age followed. Then in 1,200 BC he discovered iron.
Mankind’s inventiveness, better boats, ships, and wheeled transportation, the harnessing of the horse, better materials that enabled the fabrication of better tools, and the construction of roads, increased interactions between tribes. Mankind’s inventiveness created the new artificial environments of market-based economies, commercial enterprises, cities, and nations. These environments required governance. In response, humans invented government.
For example, the reed boats used on the Nile in 4000 BC increased interactions between tribes living along the Nile and increased trade. These interactions created a need for governance and led to the creation of the Egyptian nation in 3150 BC.[vi],[vii]
In the millennia that followed, large numbers of Homo sapiens, a tribal species found themselves living in new environments, cities, nations, market-based economies, and the metaverse to which they were maladapted. Cities, nations, market-based economies, and the metaverse had little resemblance to tribal environments.
In tribal environments, members share goals and face common threats. They work together to create safe and comfortable environments. Their commitment to a shared destiny leads to high levels of trust. That is the environment we are genetically designed to live in.
In contrast, cities, nations, market-based economies, and the metaverse are transaction-based environments. Rather than trusting, the buyer must beware.
So, since the Agricultural Revolution, humanity has been vexed by a psychological environmental crisis. This has created tensions and anxieties in our lives and is one of the reasons we are not a happy species.
In terms of happiness, things fell off a cliff in the year 2000 when the metaverse arrived.
The year 2000 was the seminal year for the psychological environmental crisis. BlackBerry introduced the RIM 957 with internet functionality in that year.[viii] The BlackBerry gave birth to the metaverse. In 2007, Apple revolutionized the cell phone industry with the introduction of the iPhone and the metaverse began its tumultuous expansion. Smartphone sales grew from 122 million in 2007 to a current rate of about 1.4 billion per year.[ix] In 2023, the number of smart device users and the population of the metaverse topped five billion.[x]
The most powerful force driving the psychological environmental crisis is time spent in the metaverse. The time spent in the metaverse is registered in mental health statistics.
Since 2000, the number of individuals suffering from mental health issues has been on the rise. Depression increased significantly in the U.S. from 6.6 percent in 2005 to 7.3 percent in 2015. The rise was most rapid among those ages 12 to 17, reaching 12.7 percent in 2015.[xi] Suicide rates increased by 33% and were responsible for more than 47,500 deaths in 2019.[xii], 4 A recent study concluded that among college-age students narcissistic personality traits rose just as fast as obesity from the 1980s to the present.[xiii] Nearly 1 out of every 16 Americans has experienced the symptoms of NPD—Narcissistic Personality Disorder.[xiv] Anxiety increased from 5.12% in 2008 to 6.68% in 2018 among adult Americans.[xv] Currently, nearly one in five adults in the U. S., ( 51.5 million in 2019 ) suffer from mental illness that can range in impact from mild, moderate, or severe. Alarmingly, 5.2% of the population exhibits the symptoms of severe impairment.[xvi]
We live in an angry country. Anger has been on the rise for the past 20 years. In 2001, 8% of Americans told Pew Research they were angry with the federal government and by 2016, the number had grown to 80%. A 2016 survey by NBC News of people who were exposed to news found that 88% of Americans got angry once a week and 68% at least once a day.
The American Psychology Association has declared rampant anxiety a national health emergency. In 2020, 45% of Americans claimed they were more anxious than a year ago.[xvii] Americans seem anxious about everything. Covid has played a major role, especially in driving an increased concern about illness. One study reported American’s greatest fear was about a loved one dying followed by concerns about illness.[xviii] Among other concerns were finances, medical bills, safety, crime, and the state of the government.
Social media has also played an important role in increasing anxiety, especially among younger Americans.
Facebook has been studying the impact of Instagram on mental health since 2019. Their studies found that “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” and that “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression.” Among Instagram users, 25% of teenagers who reported feeling “not good enough” said the feelings were triggered by Instagram. On Facebook users are surrounded by the perfect and patched-up perfect and find themselves constantly engaging in a comparison race with the ideal—a perfect formula for destroying self-esteem and increasing anxiety.
Many people blame the news for stoking peoples’ fear and anger. The most often cited example is Fox News.
As discussed above, the efficient tools we have in the metaverse for activating fear and anger have turned their activation into opportunities. Political leaders, on both the left and right, have stoked fear and anxiety among Americans to serve their political agendas. Many benefit financially from spreading fake news and inflaming emotions to recruit people to their causes.
Is it any wonder mankind is so unhappy? How should we deal with the crisis?
If living in environments to which we are genetically maladapted, created the crisis, then it makes sense to create, seek out, and spend more time in environments to which we are genetically adapted. This suggests spending more time in tribal cultures and forces one to ask the question, “Are people living in tribal cultures happier?”
Recommended by LinkedIn
They probably are. The mantra of modern economics is that we have infinite wants and a limited ability to satisfy them. Therefore, we must constantly strive to fill the gap. This constant striving leads to unhappiness.
James Suzman, in his book Affluence Without Abundance, argues that hunter-gatherers had a few basic needs that they could easily satisfy with about 15 hours of work a week. With few needs, they had few unsatisfied wants and were thus a happier group.
Suggesting we spend more time in a Stone Age Culture does sound like a backward approach to life, but let’s look at what it really means.
The most fundamental thing we have to do to reach this goal is to spend more time with more time in face-to-face relationships with family and friends. The second thing is to spend much less time entertaining ourselves in the metaverse.
It is time for Homo sapiens to act more like our Stone Age ancestors. Returning to our Stone Age roots is the best way to deal with the Psychological Environmental Crisis.
________________________________________________________________
[i] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/essential-timeline-understanding-evolution-homo-sapiens-180976807/
[ii] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/essential-timeline-understanding-evolution-homo-sapiens-180976807/
[xi] https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/depression-rise-us-especially-among-young-teens
[xiii] http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30312181/ns/today-books/t/me-me-me-americas-narcissism-epidemic/#.UFeoVBiHdIt