> I really do think the world is getting crazier, dumber, and just all around worse, this past decade most specifically. It seems the world has decided to just go nuts, shift into overdrive and metaphorically drive off a cliff.
At the turn of the last century 80 percent of the world was illiterate. In just a few generations the average Westerner has gone from subsistence farming to living in a nigh-indestructible air-conditioned box littered with supercomputers that let them transact financially and socially with billions of people around the world. We're living in completely uncharted territory and it isn't a huge leap to speculate that human brains aren't adapted for modern society. A few hundred years ago the average person's attention was devoted to pulling turnips out of the ground and hugging their family; now they must contend with high finance, complicated machinery, ever-evolving fashion and social mores, etc. The proliferation of smartphones and algorithmically-curated entertainment are merely accelerants of this trend.
Of course one must take the good with the bad. I'd rather have cool music and exotic cuisine than live in a lean-to in the woods, so my solution is twofold: I aggressively curate my interactions with media (no socials, no traditional news outlets, etc) and always try to keep in mind that most people in this world don't do this and are therefore in a constant state of cognitive exhaustion. When you consider how much more shit the average person has to deal with these days their negative behaviors suddenly become a lot more understandable.
I'm optimistic that the current wave of dopamine depletion pop pseudo-science will lead to substantial changes in our society's media literacy but that remains to be seen.