For years I did my best to help people change. From working closely with people, and watching my own life, it became clear how difficult it is to make any significant changes in one’s life. Just try to lose weight and keep it off.
What immediately becomes apparent is that people are not logical. We lead with our emotions. We have evolved to act quickly to survive. “Friend, food or foe?” had to be an instant decision for our long-ago ancestors . So many studies have shown that we use our logical thinking to justify an emotional decision. We rationalize more easily than we change.
How many times have I sat with a woman whose was living with a guy who mistreated her, cheated on her, stole from her, knowing that if I told her to just leave then I would be the one she would never see again? She was not going to leave until she was emotionally ready. She would have to work through all of the strongly intertwined emotions of love/fear/sexual attraction/ loss and loneliness. Even when the right thing to do is obvious, it’s never easy.
Now all of us, all over the world, are struggling with major changes; changes that have affected almost every area of our lives. We have been through this before, and it was a struggle then too. Over a hundred years ago many new, disruptive technologies were being developed and introduced into the lives of people in the more developed countries around the world. Many agrarian societies were transitioning into industrial societies. The “Industrial Revolution” moved people from farms and fields into factories and cities. One generation began to live very differently than their parents.
How well did the world handle that transition? Many of the conditions of the time were chronicled in the works of Charles Dickens. He wrote about the struggles of the poor, the children of the factory workers and of life in the big industrial cities. There was poverty, pollution, disease and crime. The American Civil War was fought in the early part of the Industrial Revolution as machines began to replace individual labor. The energy policy of the slave states was coming to an end.
The culmination of the use of all the new engines and mechanical marvels was the biggest, most meaningless waste of human life in history: The First World War. That was a war fought between crumbling forms of governments, run by aristocracies that were almost totally out of touch and unconcerned about the people they ruled. Millions of those people suffered horrible deaths fighting for causes that were never very clear to them, so they called it “patriotism,” and “love of the homeland.”
Now, a hundred years later, another major disruption is affecting the lives of almost everyone in the world. Since we are now causing disturbances in the planet itself, the consequences of these changes are impossible to avoid. Even the people sitting blissfully on a beautiful south sea island can see that their little patch of paradise is being covered by rising tides.
Everyone’s lifestyle is being threatened in some way, and just like we do as individuals, as a society, we resist. Change is uncomfortable. It takes energy to adjust. We can’t tell who will benefit and who will suffer, but we quickly suspect that we will get the short end. Those who are in power feel threatened because they may lose control. Those who are out of power have learned that they always lose, no matter who wins.
Since there is no job or profession that functions the way that it did twenty years ago, everyone feels a bit insecure. Anxiety is the malady of our times. So much is different and new. Families can be composed differently than twenty years ago. There are families of just men, just women, a single person and child, a man who was a woman living with a woman who was man. Babies can be made in several different ways, with up to five people involved in the process of creation.
We are again, involved in wars, but they are, at least for now, more limited. They are also being fought very differently than they were a hundred years ago, as we now have the use of drones and suicide bombers. In many ways these weapons consist of limited fire-power, but are the kinds of weapons that create a constant sense of terror. Danger is unlikely, but it feels ever-present. Something could happen anywhere, at anytime, to anyone.
During the Industrial Revolution big machine changed the way people worked, and how things were made. Many things that had been made slowly, by hand, were now made quickly, and in great quantity, by machines. Clothing is a clear example. Manufacturers began to use assembly lines to make furniture or cars. Transportation went from horses and barges to cars and trains. Communication went from letters delivered in days or months, to a telegraph, and then telephone. Someone invented a typewriter. Everything began to go faster.
Now, in our digital age, everything goes faster still. But the revolution is not just about work and making things, or transportation, or communication, although all of those things have been radically disrupted. This time there are a lot of changes in the kinds of things our minds and brains need to do. Our brains are constantly being bombarded with new information. The information comes in many forms, speech, pictures, videos, music, virtual reality, augmented reality, symbolic noises such as pings, beeps and buzzes. Much of the speech, videos, music and noises are created by machines and played on machines. We are often speaking to bots or some other kind of artificial intelligence that guides us through a menu, answers our questions., or tells us we have an appointment. Part of the new skills we have to learn in this world is how to sort out the real from the machine created, and the truth from the semi-truth, distortions or outright lies. That is proving more and more difficult to do.
Whether we realize it or not, many algorithms do our thinking for us. They guide our medical care, They select stocks for our 401Ks, They offer suggestions about what we should read, or what music we will like. They tell us what to eat and how much more we should exercise. They manage our money. They pay our bills for us automatically, and on time. They instruct us about what roads to take to get from here to there. Without realizing it, we are turning much of our thinking process over to machines. I discussed this before the election in: https://medium.com/choosing-our-future/thinking-about-thinking-350b2d401656#.ma4698my6
How will our minds and brains adapt? Will all of these thinking aids enhance our decision making abilities? Will we become less dependent upon emotion and more guided by research that shows what actions have a higher probability of working out? Or will we become increasingly dependent upon machines and as a result lose our ability to think, and to solve difficult problems?
My initial answers to those questions, based only on forty years of dealing with how people think and make decisions, is that some people will do marvelously well and use all of these new aids to great advantage. Others will, in ways that I will discuss shorty, be more victimized and manipulated. Still others will remain on the outside, hardly aware of what is going on, and will suffer as society moves on without them.
It is the second group about whom I have the most concern. I also feel that they may be the largest demographic. They are the folks who just want to live their lives in peace and harmony. They want to work at a decent job, take care of their families, have a good fun, relaxing time when they’re not working, and just go along to get along. These are the people who feel that if they take care of themselves, their families and their own responsibilities, then our society, and whoever is running it, should do a good enough job to not mess things up. Life is difficult enough for everyone, especially if you have, or you are, an adolescent kid.
Obviously, this is a dangerous assumption. The people who have run almost every country, anywhere, have always found ways to mess it up. They usually do that by taking too much control, and by allowing corruption. But by not taking enough control, things can get bad also. There will always be some people who will take advantage of others, whether they are in or out of government. Those who do not pay attention are the ones who are most easily exploited.
What we have learned is that we have to pay attention, not just to government, but to everyone who is trying to get at your mind and your money. These days that is a lot of folks, and there are lots of ways to do that, many more than ever before. Our lives are a constant stream of inputs from everywhere: family, friends, neighborhood organizations, political parties, banks, stores, tech companies, health companies, drug companies, media companies, TV, cable, movies, video games, augmented reality games, your work, your boss, your FitBIt, Facebook, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and your dog. It’s constant, and it’s addicting. We can’t turn it off. In fact we keep turning it on, like that rat pushing the lever for a reward.
It has become a chore to be selective. There are many apps that help organize and prioritize your apps. It is very difficult to determine whom to trust, what to believe, and how to respond. Most people tend to stick with what’s familiar, and that allows them to miss what is going on on the other side of the mountain. We could be watching football when the volcano blows and we wouldn’t know about it until our phone gave us an emergency text. By then the lava could be fifty feet away.. There may have been other warnings put out on-line but they weren’t on Facebook so we didn’t know.
Also, and more dangerous, we don’t know who has all this Big Data that has been gathered about us. We only know that many companies and organizations do. In many ways they know more about our behavior patterns than we do. They know where we go, what we buy and how much we are willing to spend, They know whom we hang-out with, and what we like to do with them. They know what we eat, how much we weigh, and if we exercise. They know if we drink or take drugs. They can tell how much sex we are having and probably with whom. They, whoever “they” are, know more than this, and we don’t really know who they are, what they know, or what they are doing with all of the data.
And, if you don’t pay attention, they will sculpt your behavior. If you like this, you’ll like this better, and here is a coupon for it. For you, the price is $39.99, but I’m charging him $109 because I know he doesn’t care. He likes to feel rich.
Many people know the system and can work it to their advantage. They take the bargains they want and leave the rest. They have developed their own core values and they know how to stick to them. But most people look around to see what is happening. They want to be part of the flow and hip to what’s going on. These days that can be very dangerous, and it’s is going to get worse.
My advice is PAY ATTENTION!!. Stop, as Dr. Kahneman says, and Think Slowly. Choose your own future.
Love and Kisses,
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