Love the themes. As a research professional, I’m also increasingly seeing a kind of fatalism emerge. Isolated from friends and family and faced with ever more complex choices, people often just seem overwhelmed and act more impulsively. Not least because they know new choices are going to be pushed at them whenever they access any kind of media
What do you think of some of the tradeoffs here? From reading accounts of growing up in close-knit communities there are a lot of problems with gossip, enforced conformity, persecution of anyone who is different, etc. Or similarly the experience of people with immigrant parents who get frustrated at their parents' attempts to control who they marry, what they do for work, etc. Although I don't like the isolation of individualist society, I don't think I'd get on with the opposite either. There have been real gains from what you describe as unlocking lifestyle choices, making privacy sacred, and silencing the elders.
Is there any way we can get the best of both worlds?
Oh yes...there’s no going back...I end my next book with a kind of speculative toolkit in which we can help lost individuals heal, and rebuild friendship networks...there is no modern excuse for the lack of friend time...friends have to absorb some of the responsibilities of elders...or we become accountable only to sexual partners and large companies who compel us to buy things...
Nice, will be good to see your practical recommendations.
One area where elders are being explicitly brought back is in mens circles. And mens circles are an interesting solution to this stuff generally - they provide some of the things we've lost (like eldership, accountability, male-only spaces, and ritual), while being compatible with the modern world in that any atomised individual can just choose to join, and they don't require any particular religious affiliation.
Love the themes. As a research professional, I’m also increasingly seeing a kind of fatalism emerge. Isolated from friends and family and faced with ever more complex choices, people often just seem overwhelmed and act more impulsively. Not least because they know new choices are going to be pushed at them whenever they access any kind of media
Great build! Thanks for reading!
What do you think of some of the tradeoffs here? From reading accounts of growing up in close-knit communities there are a lot of problems with gossip, enforced conformity, persecution of anyone who is different, etc. Or similarly the experience of people with immigrant parents who get frustrated at their parents' attempts to control who they marry, what they do for work, etc. Although I don't like the isolation of individualist society, I don't think I'd get on with the opposite either. There have been real gains from what you describe as unlocking lifestyle choices, making privacy sacred, and silencing the elders.
Is there any way we can get the best of both worlds?
Oh yes...there’s no going back...I end my next book with a kind of speculative toolkit in which we can help lost individuals heal, and rebuild friendship networks...there is no modern excuse for the lack of friend time...friends have to absorb some of the responsibilities of elders...or we become accountable only to sexual partners and large companies who compel us to buy things...
Nice, will be good to see your practical recommendations.
One area where elders are being explicitly brought back is in mens circles. And mens circles are an interesting solution to this stuff generally - they provide some of the things we've lost (like eldership, accountability, male-only spaces, and ritual), while being compatible with the modern world in that any atomised individual can just choose to join, and they don't require any particular religious affiliation.