How did the world suddenly become so awful ?

The term Future Shock was coined by Alvin and Heidi Toffler in the 1960s to describe a syndrome brought about by the experience of "too much change in too short a period of time". "Toffler argues that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a 'super-industrial society'. This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving them disconnected and suffering from 'shattering stress and disorientation' — future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of the future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he also popularized the term information overload."

The Tofflers' predictions for how the symptoms would be manifest appear to be roughly on target. They predicted a growth of cults and religious fundamentalism; rejection of modernism: irrational authoritarianism: and widespread insecurity. They didn't nail the other great source of insecurity today, the hollowing-out of state infrastructure and externally imposed asset-stripping in the name of economic orthodoxy that Naomi Klein highlighted in The Shock Doctrine, but to the extent that Friedmanite disaster capitalism can be seen as a predatory corporate response to massive political and economic change, I'm inclined to put disaster capitalism down as being another facet of the same problem. (And it looks as if the UK and USA are finally on the receiving end of disaster capitalism at home, in the post-2008 banking crisis era.)

I dunno, I don't find this very convincing. First, multiple theories can give correct results, so one should never evaluate a theory in isolation. It should be judged against the success of other models, not just whether it works or not (that still won't tell if it's true but it's much better than making no comparisons at all). Second I'm not sure that these are predictions in this case so much as they were an explanatory framework of phenomena which were already happening.

We have extremist, eliminationist rhetoric in American political discourse, combined with a hair-raising outbreak of ethnophobia directed at Muslims. We have France and Italy deporting Roma, in a move fuelled by a wave of xenophobia that bears unpleasant echoes of 1940-45. A wave of petty authoritarianism in the UK has led to the installation of all the well-oiled machinery of a police state. Australia had its great firewall debate. Russia's government is increasingly authoritarian, harking back to the Soviet era in methods and goals (now with less revolutionary ideology). [This was published in 2010.]

I don't think "pace of change" by itself is a very helpful explanation for all this, and I certainly don't think it's technological advancement that's to blame. We've seen darker periods throughout all of history. A related difficulty in judging the severity of problems is that political hyperbole and rhetoric work on an adaptive scale, not an absolute one : essentially, any current minor problem is inevitably described as being the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of the world. This is driven by a continual fear, not always unjustified or unhelpful, of sliding into chaos, that this difficulty will be the straw that break's the camel's back, that this political action is the one that leads to revolt and revolution.

This makes it extremely difficult (even more than it would be otherwise) for anyone to judge where they are in absolute terms. Some will say that we're in an equivalent situation to 1939 - on the very brink of catastrophe. Others will say that we're in a more quiescent period, while still others will say our situation is especially unique. It's very hard to disentangle oneself from the rhetoric of the day and determine the current state of affairs by some absolute standard.

A further related point is that satisfaction itself is also relative : in 10,000 BC I'd have been happier thanks to a sharper flint knife; today I take it for granted that all my knives work just fine. I'd be un happy if one of them broke but not especially thrilled by getting a new one. And why should I be ? Progress in resources and technological developments mean that I don't, and shouldn't have to, invest the slightest bit of effort in making a new one. I'd have to be crazy to experience the same level of delight in the purchase of a new stainless steel knife as if a caveman were to complete the construction of a flint hand axe. "Entitlement" seems to be an oddly dirty word in America, but there are quite a lot of things people are entitled to today that they weren't in bygone eras. Many of the necessities of survival, and even luxuries that were once obscene, can now be produced at low effort and negligible cost.

So while it would be tempting to use a metaphor to describe the change in the last 10-15 years, I won't. All I will say is that the social problems of that period, while present, were not as bad as those of now. Things have gotten worse, but that still doesn't mean the world is about to be engulfed in fire. I'm sure there were people saying that in 1939, but I'm also sure you could find people saying the same thing as just about any point in history. All declines look like slippery slopes to those experiencing them. People also have this tendency to complain about how tough they used to have it "back in my day" while paradoxically insisting that things are now much worse and that youngsters should just get used to it.

What I would suggest is that the last decade or so has significantly exacerbated underlying problems. These are not largely technologically driven but political. We've done a lousy job at managing both resources and expectations. It's not that change is happening rapidly - that's too simple. It's that change is not being managed in a way that fairly benefits people materially or, for want of a better word, spiritually. Would you suffer from future shock if your suddenly found that your old, dirty, dangerous job as no longer possible but you were offered a replacement position doing something more comfortable and better paid ? I doubt such a change would encourage a drive towards authoritarianism. The most you'd get it is a bizarre but harmless nostalgia for the past, not a determination to bring it back.

Rant over, for now....

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/09/a-working-hypothesis.html