mem_somerville_kbinOpinion | Your Brain Has Tricked You Into Thinking Everything Is Worse
Our biased attention means we’ll always feel like we’re living in dark times, and our biased memory means we’ll always feel like the past was brighter. #science
Well, I think Reddark is really legit dark. But I agree on the other points. Your brain stores negative stuff more than positive stuff. But the last line is the kicker:
As long as we believe in this illusion, we are susceptible to the promises of aspiring autocrats who claim they can return us to a golden age that exists in the only place a golden age has ever existed: our imaginations.
Here is their accompanying paper: The illusion of moral decline https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06137-x
The illusion of moral decline - Nature
We show that the perception of moral decline is pervasive, perdurable, unfounded and easily produced, and suggest that this illusion has implications for research on the misallocation of scarce resources, the underuse of social support and social influence.
borkcorkedforksI mean we just limped through a pandemic, have rising inflation (no wages haven't keep up for decades), could see a recession/depression soon, kinda need to be worried about fascism again, and have climate change to deal with. I probably forgot about some stuff too.
The past is often tented in our minds either due to limited information of that time or because we were a kid at the time. It is also true that a lot of stuff is better. Still, people have good reason to worry about the current state of the world.
NaichI'd say that objectively, the mid to latter part of the 90s was pretty good. The iron curtain had fallen, there weren't any major economic disasters, the world wouldn't go batshit until after 9-11, and the internet wasn't full of complete arseholes.
Well...a lot of people were dying of AIDS then. And there was a lot of hostility to the gay community. I think it depends on your perspective.
I love history, and spend a lot of time thinking about it, reading about it, talking about it. But there's really no time I'd like to travel to as a unmarried, not Christian, education-craving female. YMMV.
How much have global temps gone up since then? How much BPA/PFOA/PFAS has been released into the ecosystem since then? How many once-in-a-lifetime economic calamities have we had? How many more school shootings do we have per year now than before?
I think you have to look at the complete picture and not just some key points regarding demographic improvements. LGBT kids get shot in schools too, LGBT people lose their jobs and become homeless too.
There were great improvements in some areas, but we need to be circumspect on the broader declines.
So what past time is your ideal?
XGC75Negativity bias is objectively consistent and has been known for quite a while. It's important we balance that out with an intentional focus on positive thinking.
Nostalgia: The amnesia of bad events in your past.