The human brain has proven to be remarkably adaptable and pliable to its changing environment.
Think about the environment in which we evolved over thousands of years. The amount of external stimulation was relatively minimal. The wind blew, the sun shone, the average person interacted with just a few dozen people in their lifetime. Plants and vegetation were fixed and predictable.
Our human brains evolved to take our minimal external inputs and then synthesize that into maximum internal creativity. Our brains are a brilliant fount of creativity, even when placed in a situation of minimal external stimulation.
Now think about today. We live in a world of almost infinite external inputs and stimulation. The average human being, through the Internet, has access to all the information in the history of the world. Nearly infinite text, history, music, video, movies, theories . . . nearly infinite everything.
When you combine the awesome creativity of the human brain with its unnatural access to infinite inputs, the result can be amazing. Sometimes amazingly good. Sometimes amazingly bad.
The enormous advances in human science and technology is an example of the good. The rise of depraved human sexuality is an example of the bad.
Is it any surprise that as our technology advances at breakneck speed mental illness is on the rise, leading to a host of disturbing manifestations such as teenage suicide, endless pornography, unparalleled greed, school shootings and political violence.
Not only is the human brain ill equipped to process this mass infusion of information, but the societal changes caused by technological progress further stress the human psyche.
For high functioning individuals, this is a time of great opportunity and advancement. But for most of society, it is a time of overwhelming stress and cognitive overload.
We can see this play out in the concentration of enormous wealth among a smaller and smaller segment of the upper end on the intellectual scale. Brilliant people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg have created wealth beyond imagination. Meanwhile, lower skilled workers have seen their buying power erode and struggle to raise a family.
For almost all of human history, the great mass of humanity was raised within the narrow confines of prevailing social, cultural and religious norms. We were raised to think and believe in a certain way. We had little choice in the matter. The world we lived in was the world that was handed down to us. Truth and right was accepted as absolutes. And we were all ultimately accountable to God for our salvation.
But now man, with his powerful new tools, is trying to become God. The rise of artificial intelligence is a perfect example of that. Man is trying to become the source of knowledge and wisdom. This is doomed for failure without the proper humility and deference to our creator.
We all know the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. What was the one thing God forbid them to do? Eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. But the devil, in the form of a snake, convinced them to do it. They wanted to know what God knows. That is the original sin. They committed it, dooming humanity to be at the mercy of death.
Then there was the Tower of Babel. Man was going to use his new-found engineering prowess to build a gateway to heaven. For what purpose? Perhaps to barge into heaven? We all know how that effort ended, dooming us to suffer through the agonizing difficulty of learning Spanish and French.
The decline of mainstream mass media is a good example of the fractionalization of the American mindset. Back in the day, it was technologically impossible to deliver a customized package of news and information to each individual. It was too expensive.
As a result, mass media was born. Everyone saw the same TV program and received the same copy of the newspaper. In order to increase readership and viewership, media companies tried to appeal to as many people as possible and tried to alienate as few people as possible. Mass media appealed to the broadest spectrum of opinion. As a result, mass media had an enormous unifying effect on American thinking.
Those were the good old days when Walter Cronkite read the news to tens of millions of viewers like a fair-minded, intelligent uncle. We read the same newspapers which subscribed to the same news services. We all watched the same television programs and read the same weekly news magazines and books. We were one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
But time stops for no one and technology advances. Over-the-air television with its limited spectrum gave way to cable TV. Instead of three channels there were 30, then 300.
The first step was taken by media mogul Rupert Murdoch when he created Fox News, devoted to right wing ideology. Rather than appealing to everyone, Murdoch realized he could just appeal to the right wing and still make plenty of money.
Mass print publications gave way to the Internet which could now affordably deliver a customized package of news to every single individual. News sources began appealing to ideological slivers of people rather than a mass audience. Right wingers could be fed a constant stream of right wing news. Left wingers could be fed a constant stream of left-wing news. The huge political polarization of the American people had begun.
Instead of Walter Cronkite appealing to the mainstream, you now have Tucker Carlson outraging the right and Rachel Maddow outraging the left.
I don’t watch much TV news but when I do, I try to watch both sides. It is utterly amazing to behold. It’s as though each side is living on a whole other planet. And we wonder why there is a rise in political violence and the debasement of civil political discourse.
Does this make me a pessimist? Not at all. This is just one more step in the evolution of humanity. Technology is simply a tool. Whether it is used for good or evil depends on the state of mankind. The state of mankind depends solely on its spiritual relationship with its maker and creator, the triune God.
All of this mendacity and evil will fade away if we simply love God with all our heart, mind and soul and love our neighbors as ourselves. That is the true challenge of mankind: To realize its proper place in the universe, to worship and obey God, not try to be God.
